Williams started this week by announcing they had signed a new name to its Racing Driver Academy: Franco Colapinto.
The 19-year-old Argentinian will race in Formula 3 this year with MP Motorsport. Williams is the latest in a line of big-name supporters of his career, which include a current F1 driver.
After being a champion karter in his home country, Colapinto made waves internationally when he won the first-ever Olympic karting event at the 2018 Youth Olympics. Later that year he began his car racing career in the Spanish Formula 4 championship and won on his debut weekend.
Colapinto signed with the Drivex School team co-founded by Pedro de la Rosa to make a full-time move into cars for 2019 in Spanish F4, and joined de la Rosa in the Formula 1 paddock during pre-season testing. There he convinced de la Rosa and his good friend Fernando Alonso to back his career, and Colapinto would spend the year racing in the colours of Alonso’s FA Racing Team brand.
Their support was rewarded as Colapinto dominated Spanish F4, winning 11 races out of 21 and earned himself appearances in higher categories with Drivex after initially evaluating moving straight into F3 for his rookie season of car racing (which was ruled out due to Colapinto not reaching the category’s minimum age until mid-season).
For 2020 he took the intermediary step of moving up to Formula Regional with MP, starting in the Toyota Racing Series with the Kiwi Motorsport team MP was supporting and coming third in the standings. Either side of him were Red Bull’s highly rated Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda.
That form continued into the Formula Renault Eurocup, where he won two races and finished on the podium seven other times while also juggling coaching/engineering commitments in Spanish F4 – a trait of technical understanding and communication skills that F1 teams look out for.
Alonso’s support had ended by this point, but Colapinto was now part of the Bullet Sport Management company whose connections enabled the teenager to demonstrate his skills in a far wider range of machinery.
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In addition to staying in Formula Regional with MP, where he won twice in an otherwise frustrating European championship campaign in a Gulf-sponsored car, Colapinto moved into prototype sports car racing….
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