2024 Italian Grand Prix

Sven Smeets, Alex Albon & Franco Colapinto react after the race

Published

01 SEP 2024

Est. reading time

3 min

Sven Smeets, Sporting Director: It was a nerve-racking afternoon, but with a great finish! After our disappointing weekend last week, the team has bounced back with a solid performance. Alex was outstanding today, making the one-stop strategy work, holding off Alonso, who was on a two-stop, and sticking close to Magnussen in front of us, who had a 10-second penalty. His P9 is well-deserved, and he will be very happy to be back in the points. Franco had a great first race, starting from P18 and making his way past a few cars at the beginning. He also made the one-stop strategy work with a well-managed long stint on the Hard tyres. He can look back on an impressive first weekend and a well-deserved P12 in the race.

We leave Europe behind us now and will begin the last leg of eight overseas races in two weeks in Baku. We’re looking forward to the next races as we bring more performance to the cars, and there is still a lot to play for.

Alex Albon: It was a good race and I’m happy. I felt like we did a decent job, whilst also struggling quite a lot with the tyres. The front left was always a problem throughout so I had to manage this, and I couldn’t really stop the graining, which was always a problem for us. In the end, we did a good job of surviving while relying on Kevin’s penalty to get P9. Haas had us beat this weekend on race pace, so we still have some work to do, but with another upgrade to come, hopefully, we can get back into this point-scoring rhythm for the remaining races of the season. Also, well done to Franco on a great race, he did an impressive job on his first weekend in F1.

Franco Colapinto: I’m really happy to have completed my first Formula 1 race, it’s a moment I will never forget. The race was physically tough as I’m a bit tired and sore now but there are plenty of positives to take. Before today I had never driven more than eight laps in a row in the FW46 and today there were 53 to do with very high track temps. I think I did a good job of managing the tyres to make the one-stop work and the race pace was strong. I’m very happy for the team. It was great to give them a positive result from my first race after all the hard work they’ve put in to get me up to speed this weekend. Of course, there are still things to work on but I’m very excited to jump back in the car in two weeks to go racing again.

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