In his first weekend of competition of the 2024 season in
Formula 2
, the Argentine driver
Franco Colapinto
placed 16th in the classification that took place this Thursday at the
Bahrain
International Circuit , in Sakhir, and from that position he will start both in the
sprint race
on Friday and in
the main test on Saturday
of the category that accompanies
Formula 1
.
Aboard vehicle number 12 of the MP Motorsport team, the driver born 20 years ago in Pilar needed 1:42.392 to complete the best of his 12 laps of the 5,412-meter track and was 696 thousandths behind the Indian
Kushi Maini
, from Invicta Racing, who took
pole position
for the first race of the year.
Colapinto, who last year finished fourth in the
Formula 3
championship , had done a very outstanding job in the
training
session that had taken place earlier: he had been second, with a time of 1:45.236 and 137 thousandths behind. from the Frenchman Isack Hadjar (Campos Racing), who was the fastest in that round.
However, with track conditions cooler than during training that allowed the times to be considerably improved, the
Williams Academy
driver could not hold back his good performance and will now have to try to advance
from far behind
in both the sprint race, which will take place on Friday starting at 11:15, as in the main competition, which will be held on Saturday at 7:30.
After qualifying, Colapinto was dissatisfied with the performance of his new vehicle.
“It is not superior aerodynamically, we are skating much more, we have less total load.
But all the teams are adapting, you have to find where the lap goes in each car,” he assessed.
And he added: “We have to continue working hard to find something extra with the soft rubber, it is the first race and there are many in the year.”
No time to rest, we move on to F2 practice!
#F2 #BahrainGP pic.twitter.com/39vEkWPJml
— MP Motorsport (@OfficialMPteam) February 29, 2024
From the eighth starting row, Colapinto will fight to get closer to the vanguard men.
Behind Kushi Maini in Thursday's classification was his Invicta Racing teammate, Brazilian Gabriel Bortoleto, Formula 3 champion in 2023, who was 219 thousandths behind the Indian.
Further back were Hadjar, Barbadian Zane Maloney (Rodin Motorsport) and Norwegian Dennis Hauger, Colapinto's teammate.
The first 10 places were completed by the Japanese Ritomo Miyata (Rodin Motorsport), the British Zak O'Sullivan (Art Grand Prix), the Brazilian Enzo Fittipaldi (Van Amersfoort Racing), the French Victor Martins (Art Grand Prix) and the British Taylor Barnard (PHM AIX Racing).