Emilia Romagna Grand Prix starting grid changed as driver hit with rare penalty

has received a one-place grid penalty for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, dropping him from 15th to 16th. The racer entered the fast lane in Q1 before a restart time had been confirmed. The confusion occurred after a huge crash for Yuki Tsunoda brought out a lengthy red-flag delay. The FIA stewards eventually sent out a provisional start time to the teams, after which Colapinto was released into the end of the pit lane.

This was a premature move from the Alpine squad, though, and set the Argentine race up for a surefire one-place grid penalty. Colapinto's penalty was a rare one in the longer-term history of F1, but lightning struck twice this year as Mercedes suffered the same fate in Bahrain. Both George Russell and Kimi Antonelli received one-place grid drops after the Silver Arrows' operational blunder.

"The driver misunderstood the instruction and entered the fast lane before the re-start time was officially confirmed in breach of the Race Director's event notes," the stewards explained after qualifying. "Once this was done, it was too late to reverse course and the team instructed the driver to proceed down the pit lane.

"The team argued that there was no sporting advantage gained in this case as there was sufficient time remaining for other teams to perform their run plans as this was the start of the session. The team representative and the driver apologised for the inadvertent breach.

"The stewards consider that this breach was inadvertent but it did require a sporting penalty to be imposed. However as the breach was unintentional and this did not result in any sporting advantage, we decided to impose a one position grid penalty. A similar breach in different circumstances, could entail a more severe sporting penalty, in future."

Unfortunately for Colapinto, his frustrations carried over into Q2. On his first flying lap, the 20-year-old dipped his left-side wheels on the grass on the exit of Turn Three, sending him spinning into the barriers at high speed. This ended his hopes of progressing into Q3.

This was not the desired start to Colapinto's time with Alpine. The decision to bring the Pilar-born star in for Jack Doohan just six races into the 2025 campaign led to intense scrutiny from fans and pundits, and put the onus on the Argentine to perform from the get-go.

Colapinto has just five races to impress Flavio Briatore and secure his future for the remainder of the 2025 season, and if he is to make a positive impression in Imola this weekend, he will need to fight through from 16th on the grid at one of F1's most challenging tracks to overtake on.