Franco Colapinto took his first Formula 2 victory at Imola on Saturday, taking the sprint race win from Paul Aron on the final lap. After the race, Colapinto spoke to Feeder Series and selected media in a press conference.

By Martin Lloyd

The race began with Aron passing Colapinto and his Hitech teammate, Amaury Cordeel. Having started from third on the grid, the Estonian now led, while chaos ensued behind the top trio. Five cars were eliminated in an incident before Turn 2, which began with a collision between Isack Hadjar and Roman Staněk. Having started fourth and seventh respectively, the pair were side-by-side when Staněk moved to the left to avoid a collision with Colapinto ahead, and pinched Hadjar into a spin.

This caused those behind to lose speed as they took avoiding action, with Joshua Dürksen, Enzo Fittipaldi and Dennis Hauger all retiring from the race with heavy damage. Meanwhile, the leading trio escaped – including Colapinto. He, Staněk and Hadjar were all summoned to the stewards after the race. On Lap 6, Colapinto passed Cordeel, with Aron eventually following. He told Feeder Series of his delight with the result.

“I’m very pleased,” Colapinto said. “I’m extremely happy and very proud of the team, and very proud of everyone who has been supporting me in this tough start to the year.”

Colapinto did have a difficult start to the season. Heading into the Imola weekend, he had only scored points on two occasions, with sixth in the Bahrain feature race accompanied by fourth in the Melbourne sprint. He was also disqualified after finishing seventh in the feature race in Melbourne, having failed to engage with the race start-up procedure. Colapinto hopes that the result at Imola can kickstart his season.

“We did struggle a bit at the start of the season, and we are bouncing back,” he said. “There’s a long year ahead of us and out of 14 races, there are 10 to go. Everything can change and I know we’ve had a poor start, but we can wake up from here onwards and do a really good job for the rest of the season.”

’Not the cleanest’

Aron was understandably disappointed. Having led the entire race, keeping Colapinto at bay for 19 green-flag laps, the Estonian made a slight mistake at the final corner of the penultimate lap. This gave Colapinto an opportunity to pounce, which he took. The Argentinian drew alongside on the start-finish straight, and muscled his way past on the outside of Turn 3 at Tamburello.

Aron could not hold on, and expressed his frustrations in the press conference, feeling that Colapinto’s race-winning move was ‘not the cleanest’, but also stating that he had not yet seen a replay and that he respected the opinion of the stewards.

Behind the top two, Zane Maloney passed Cordeel on Lap 23 to secure the final podium place. Cordeel was forced to settle for fourth ahead of Ollie Bearman. The feature race polesitter Gabriel Bortoleto finished sixth, with Taylor Barnard scoring AIX Racing’s first points in any guise since Monza 2022. Trident’s Richard Verschoor was the final points-scorer, taking eighth place. 

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency