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‘Don’t understand it’: How Baku’s big crash could cost one team millions
"Love getting taken out by my teammate! " | 00:24Lando Norris has apologised for declaring Franco Colapinto “shouldn’t be in Formula 1”, but the damage the Argentine did to his Alpine team and its finances isn’t so easily fixed.
Colapinto triggered a three-car crash at the first safety car restart of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix when he catastrophically braked far too late to make turn 1. He was guaranteed to crash once he missed his braking point, but fortunate decreed it would be his teammate, Pierre Gasly, whom he slammed into first. Gasly then clattered into Norris, putting the reigning champion out of the race too.
Fox Sports, available on Kayo Sports, is the only place to watch every practice, qualifying session and race in the 2026 FIA Formula One World Championship™ LIVE in 4K.The furious Norris argued that Colapinto should be banned for a race and that, in fact, the mistake was unbecoming for a Formula 1 driver.
“When you’re in Formula 1, you want to be against the best drivers in the world, and when stuff like this happens, it’s because he shouldn’t be there,” he said. Colapinto was handed a 10s penalty, which will be converted to a five-place grid drop this weekend in Malaysia.
“After the race, I sent Franco a message apologising for the comments I made that I simply should not have said,” he wrote. “I’ve made mistakes of my own over the years and I know this is very much a part of racing and fighting on the limit. “Me and Franco came to a good understanding, are still good friends and are both excited to get back racing this weekend.
”Quite apart from the damage done to both its cars, the impact on the team’s championship position won’t be so easily swallowed. The battle for fifth in the constructors championship isn’t exactly the stuff of headlines, but it is very much the stuff of bottom lines. The title table is where the real money is made in Formula 1.
It’s the basis on which prize money is doled out at the end of the season, and each position is worth millions of dollars. Prize money is awarded using a complex and secret formula embedded in the commercial deal that binds the teams to the sport.
Though every team gets a baseline payout figure, there’s a second tranche of money doled out according to title position, along with a bonuses to Ferrari as the longest-standing team and to any other team to have finished in the championship top three over the last decade. The difference between fifth and sixth in the title race last year was estimated to have been worth around $13.3 million. Teams award bonuses to their employees based on championship position.
It might be the less talked about, less prestigious of the two titles up for grabs in Formula 1, but for any team member who isn’t a driver, it’s massively and personally important. So you can imagine the sigh from the Alpine garage when Colapinto wiped himself and Gasly out of what was looking like a comfortable double points finish — Gasly was running seventh before the restart, with Colapinto 10th.
Had they continued in those positions and restarted safety, Alpine likely would’ve scored five points in eighth and ninth. That precious score would have reduced the team’s deficit to fifth in the championship to just four points, 73-77, on a day Racing Bulls looked likely to finish outside the top 10. Instead Colapinto’s crash ironically created a situation in which Racing Bulls picked up points while Alpine went scoreless, with Arvid Lindblad finishing seventh, for six points.
Racing Bulls now leads by 15 points — a healthy margin when midfield teams are usually battling for three points at most on a normal weekend without attrition among the leaders.
“We did a very good weekend and the car was one of the best race cars we’ve had this season,” a devastated Gasly told Sky Sports. “I’m still struggling to process the outcome and the fact that we had both cars in the points and in the end we get outscored by Racing Bulls by a lot of points.
”Team boss Flavio Britaore, not exactly known for his softly-softly approach, was apoplectic, with thepodcast reporting he was so enraged that he left the circuit immediately, bound for the airport.
“Obviously I’m extremely disappointed with the outcome of today’s race,” he said. “These sorts of incidents shouldn’t happen, particularly when we were running well with both cars in pointscoring positions. “I feel very sorry for the team and for Pierre, who did a great job all weekend, and my apologies also go to Lando and McLaren for ruining their race.
“I know that Franco has taken full responsibility for it, as he should; in fact he braked far too late considering the context of the race and the safety car restart. It was a very poor move for a driver of his experience.
“I want to take time to reflect on it and consider what course of action should be taken, so we can learn from it and avoid such a situation in future. ” There had been some speculation, since dismissed, that Alpine might mete out its own ban, though that was always unlikely — fielding a reserve driver at short notice in Malaysia, not visited by F1 in a decade, would almost certainly mean the second car wouldn’t score points, whereas Colapinto has a better chance of atoning for his error with a top-10 finish.
Norris’s since retracted call for a ban was anyway friendless in the paddock, including among other drivers. But just because an exclusion would have been widely viewed as over the top doesn’t mean a five-place penalty was sufficient. The licence points scheme was invested after Romain Grosjean was banned for a race for causing a first-turn pileup at the 2012 Belgian Grand Prix.
Though the mistake was serious, the ban was viewed as much for that one incident as it was for the Frenchman’s reputation — Mark Webber memorably called him a “first-lap nutcase” that season. Instituting penalty points, with 12 leading to an automatic ban, was a way to take the vibes out of the decision-making. Kevin Magnussen is the only driver so far to receive an automatic ban for accruing 12 penalty points.
Three of them were for track limits violations and another two were for making non-damaging contact with Gasly that had no bearing on the race of either driver. This season the system has been tightened, but arguable too much, with no driver receiving penalty points for causing a crash, only for yellow flag or safety car infringements.
Were the crash worth, say, four points, Colapinto would have been banned had he repeated the mistake twice more in the next 12 months — notwithstanding he already has four points on his licence. Instead, if this is the precedent, he could continue making the same mistake over and over without facing the ultimate punishment. For what it’s worth, Colapinto does not have a reputation for recklessness in battle. Rare has he made mistakes that have cost other drivers.
His driving isn’t screaming out for big punishments. But then that’s what the penalty points system is for — punishing dangerous driving only when it becomes a pattern. There’s a secondary element here too, though, which will undoubtedly be feeding Alpine’s frustration. Arvid Lindblad was similarly error-prone at the restart, tipping teammate Liam Lawson into a spin that dropped the Kiwi to the back of the pack.
Lindblad had ambitiously attempted to thread the needle between Lawson and Esteban Ocon to go three-wide in the first turn. The gap was never there and was never going to open. It was only because of the Colapinto crash that Lindblad ended up 10th for the second restart, which he later turned into a profitable seventh. It was a slightly less egregious error than Colapinto’s, and no driver retired as a result, though it ruined Lawson’s race.
But it appeared to be a case of the stewards leaving friendly fire to the team to sort out internally. After all, if the stewards called a hearing, Racing Bulls wouldn’t have argued for a penalty for one of its own drivers — especially given that driver scored points.
“Obviously I’m not going to go and protest my teammate, but I don’t understand it, because I got hit so hard that it put a hole in my floor,” he said, per“I was just turning for the corner, giving the guy space. So where I’m sitting, I don’t understand, but let’s say it’s great for the team.
” Racing Bulls will be able to move on more easily from the incident given the team came away in a stronger position when it had been braced to suffer a points swing against it. Alpine, though, will be stewing on what punishment fits Colapinto’s crime without harming his chances of making up for the lost points in the remaining races.
It will do so knowing that, no matter what, it’s almost certain to end up in another social media storm. Colapinto’s tenure at Alpine has coincided with an ugly uptick in toxic activity in the online F1 environment. After his crash and the subsequent discourse over his driving, Alpine was moved to make a public statement to denounce “the hate and abuse online”.
“Condemning abuse on social media is not aimed at any one fan base or the supporters of one team or driver,” the statement reads. “This is universal and should be called out and recognised to all fans of the sport. ” It’s the fourth time in the last 16 months Alpine has made a similar statement calling out bad behaviour online.
It started before Colapinto had even got in the car, with Jack Doohan receiving such vile personal threats that he had to hire personal security during the Miami Grand Prix, when speculation peaked that he was about to be replaced by the Argentine. Before Baku, Pierre Gasly had received similar invective over a miscommunication between him, Colapinto and the Alpine pit wall at the Spanish Grand Prix that ultimately had no bearing on his race outcome.
“To that extent of threat, attacks, I find it completely inappropriate, especially when it reaches out to family members, girlfriend et cetera. I don’t think that should be the case. ” Briatore threatened to cut off media access to Colapinto, with Argentine television the first to go, if the attacks didn’t stop. It’s just another problem for the team to deal with after a painful self-inflicted title blow in Baku.
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