- Lando Norris called for a one race ban after Franco Colapinto triggered a three car crash that eliminated Norris and both Alpines from the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
- Race winner George Russell, runner up Max Verstappen and third placed Isack Hadjar all pushed back publicly, calling a ban too harsh for a cold tire misjudgment.
- Alpine issued its second statement of the year condemning online abuse aimed at Colapinto and Norris, as Colapinto and Gasly insisted their partnership remains intact.
Some Drivers Shouldn’t Be in Formula 1
Lando Norris walked down the Baku pit lane after his car had been towed away, still in his overalls, and did not soften anything for the cameras waiting for him. “Just some drivers that shouldn’t be in Formula 1, to be honest,” he said. A day later, three of the men who finished on the podium without him stood in front of the same cameras and told him he was wrong.
Thirty Six Laps In, Everything Changed
Franco Colapinto had been running tenth, in the points, on one of Alpine’s best weekends of the season, when the Safety Car bunched the field for a restart on lap 36 of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Cold tires, cold brakes, and a driver who badly misjudged his braking zone into Turn 1 turned a promising afternoon into wreckage for three cars at once. Colapinto locked up and speared into the side of his own teammate, Pierre Gasly, running seventh at the time. Gasly’s car was launched into Norris on the outside, spinning the reigning world champion straight into the barriers. All three retired on the spot.
Norris had already been fighting a car that felt, in his words, close to undriveable on the straights, and he had lost a position to Gasly six laps earlier after running wide at Turn 1 himself. None of that softened what came next. “At the end of the day, I just got taken out,” he told reporters. “I’ve not seen it, but if you cause a crash in a restart like this, you should have at least a one-race ban. I just got taken out. And the FIA should be stricter by starting to hand out bans for this kind of stuff.”
He kept going after the stewards handed Colapinto a ten-second time penalty, converted into a five-place grid drop for the next round in Bahrain, as Colapinto had already retired and could not serve a time penalty on track. “It costs a lot of money, all my parts are in the bin now,” Norris said. “It is not driving that deserves to be in Formula 1. In Formula 1 you would expect that drivers can anticipate that the grip will be low and tyre temperatures are low. You want to be against the best drivers and when stuff like this happens it is because, yeah, they shouldn’t be there.”
An Apology That Came Fast
Colapinto did not fight the criticism. On team radio, and again in front of the same media scrum, the Argentine took the blame without qualification. “Just to all the team, not only to Pierre, but it’s just a big mistake,” he said. “So a big, big sorry to Pierre, to everyone in the factory that has been working really hard. We were with both cars in the points so very sad and disappointed. Big, big sorry, it’s a big mistake. Just cold brakes, cold tyres and locked up and completely out of control. Unfortunately, I also took Pierre out and Lando of course but big sorry to both of them.”
Gasly, who had been enjoying one of his stronger weekends of the season before his own teammate collected him, sounded almost too stunned to be angry. “It’s not easy,” he said. “We did a very good weekend and it was one of the best race cars we’ve had this season and the pace was great, keeping up with Lewis and Lando for most of the race and we had a 14 or 15-second gap to the midfield. So I think a lot of positives to take away but I’m still struggling to process the outcome.” Alpine had entered the lap 36 restart on course to close most of a nine-point gap to Racing Bulls in the constructors’ standings. They left Baku fifteen points behind instead.
The Podium Pushes Back
What made the story stretch into a second day was not the crash itself but the reaction to Norris’s demand for a ban. Race winner George Russell, who had held off Max Verstappen by 0.196 seconds at the checkered flag, was asked directly about the one-race ban Norris wanted, and disagreed without hesitation. “I think that’s too harsh, personally,” Russell said. “Safety Car restarts, cold tires, a very small mistake can have big consequences. And from what I saw, that’s what it looked like. It was a small error that had a big consequence. I think, personally, race bans should come from drivers intentionally doing something very dangerous and very reckless. So I think it was unfortunate.”
Verstappen, who finished second, backed Russell up and pointed to Colapinto’s immediate apology as the reason the incident did not need a harsher response. “As long as, of course, the driver that caused it is aware of what he did, right, and apologized. That happens. I mean, a small mistake or misjudgment, you lock up, it’s on the inside, low grip, and then I guess a bit unfortunate that it involves so many cars. But it’s unfortunate, it happens, and it’s not nice for anyone involved, right? But like George said, I think a race ban probably is a bit much.”
Third-placed Isack Hadjar went further, aiming at the circuit itself rather than the driver. “From my side, I think the track is not good enough,” Hadjar said. “You move out of the racing line, it starts to be very bumpy. It’s hard to generate tire and brake temperature behind the Safety Car, it’s going quite slowly. So then you just overdo it and then it has big, big consequences. So, I think a race ban is way too harsh.”
A Second Front Opens Online
The on-track disagreement was the smaller of the two arguments that followed Baku. Within hours of Norris’s comments circulating, Colapinto’s social media accounts, and Norris’s own, were flooded with abusive comments, a pattern that has followed the Argentine driver through much of his rookie campaign. Alpine, which had already issued a public statement in April condemning abuse directed at Colapinto after a separate incident involving the Haas drivers, issued a second one on Sunday.
“As a team, we feel it’s necessary to speak out once more about the hate and abuse online following the Azerbaijan Grand Prix,” the statement read, adding that the abuse was “not only aimed at one of our own drivers, but also members of the Formula 1 community, including media, and to our racing counterparts who we respect, admire, and revel competing against in the pinnacle of motorsport.” The team called the behavior “a regular occurrence in recent races” that “cannot be condoned,” and pledged to keep working with Formula 1 and the FIA to address it. Gasly himself had spoken earlier in the week about the abuse he and his family received after an unrelated clash with Colapinto in Madrid, abuse he called “completely inappropriate.”
Two Teammates, Still Talking
For all the noise, Colapinto and Gasly are locked in together at Alpine for next season regardless of how Baku is remembered. Asked whether the partnership could survive a second costly collision in as many months, Gasly kept his answer simple. “Respect. It’s all about respect. As long as there is respect, everything is possible,” he said. Colapinto agreed. “We are good. We have always been quite good together. Since we worked together for the first time, we got on very well so we need to move on.”
Norris, for his part, leaves Baku having lost a car, a points finish and an argument with three of his rivals, all inside 24 hours. Formula 1 heads to Sepang next for the Bahrain Grand Prix, hosted this year in Malaysia for the first time in nine years, where Colapinto will start five places back for a mistake nobody, in the end, disputed making. Whether it should have cost him a race entirely is a question the paddock has now spent a full weekend arguing about, and the reigning champion is still the only one who thinks the answer is yes.
