The Argentine driver Franco Colapinto (Alpine) was very self-critical after his poor performance in the qualifying for the sprint race of the Chinese Grand Prix, acknowledging he is 'a bit lost'. Colapinto finished 16th in the sprint classification, so he continues to struggle with an aspect that has been his great weakness since arriving in Formula 1. The result of his Alpine teammate, Frenchman Pierre Gasly, exposes this even more as he finished seventh and will have serious chances of scoring points in Saturday's midnight sprint. 'I'm a bit lost because I was very far from Pierre, and he's my reference,' Colapinto admitted in a televised interview provided by the Argentine News Agency, and added: 'I was close in FP1.' Colapinto will compete in the sprint race of the Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix this Saturday, where he will start from 16th place after another poor qualifying session. Colapinto will have it tough, as in these races that last half as long as normal ones, only the top eight score points, so he would need to stage a major comeback. To this must be added that Colapinto's record in sprints is not good at all, as he has never been able to score points in this type of event. The first three he competed in were in 2024, in his debut year in the category. 'We have to understand why and be better tomorrow.' The sprint race of the Chinese Grand Prix, in which British driver George Russell (Mercedes) will start from pole position, is scheduled for 00:00 this Saturday. In Austin (USA) and in Brazil he finished 12th, relatively close to the points zone, although in Qatar he was 18th after starting from the pits. However, in 2025 he had a major setback in terms of results, which was also accompanied by the very poor performance of the Alpine A525. The first sprint he competed in during 2025 was at the Belgian GP, at the famous Spa-Francorchamps circuit. It's a track he didn't know, he had a lot to improve and work on, but 'I didn't make the step from FP1 to qualifying'. At the same time, he added that 'there is a lot to work on tonight and improve for tomorrow's qualifying', although he rescued as a positive point that 'it was good to get to know the track and understand a bit more everything'. Finally, he analyzed: 'I lacked quite a bit of performance today.'
