🇺🇸 Report: United States Grand Prix - Austin 2026
A weekend of real progress that ended with a DNF
Published
28 Oct 2026
Est. reading time
3 min
🇺🇸 Austin delivered exactly what it promised:
Speed, track limits everywhere and a race that had everything.
Franco arrived on Sunday at the Circuit of the Americas with a 10-place grid penalty for an electronics unit change, leaving him to start from P20. In those circumstances, the goal was to make up ground and score. The pace was there. The luck, not so much.
Race results
🥇 P1: Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes)
🥈 P2: Charles Leclerc (Ferrari)
🥉 P3: Max Verstappen (Red Bull)
🇫🇷 Pierre Gasly: P10 (1 point)
🇦🇷 Franco Colapinto: DNF
📸 Best photos from the weekend
Franco’s progression in Austin
A weekend where the pace was better than the results suggested, especially in the race.
FP1: Focused mainly on race preparation due to the penalty. Speed trap P15 at 319 km/h. Overall lap P17 with a 1:38.121 on softs.
FP2: Prioritising race setup over qualifying pace. Overall lap P15 with a 1:37.201 on softs. Four laps deleted for track limits in a weekend where 128 laps were deleted in FP2 alone.
FP3: The biggest step of the weekend. Speed trap P2 at 341 km/h, just 1 km/h off his best of the year in Malaysia. Overall lap P15 with a 1:36.251 on softs. The improvement in S2 compared to FP2 was notable.
Qualifying: With the penalty already factored in, Franco made it through to Q2. His best top speed numbers of the entire weekend: P1 in the speed trap at 341 km/h, the fastest of the entire field. He finished P14 with a 1:35.722 on softs, a lap that in a different context would have meant a much better starting position.
Race: The toughest day. Speed trap P3 at 347 km/h, the third fastest on the grid. With a fastest lap of 1:41.087 on lap 33 on soft tyres. The race pace was strong according to the team, matching Gasly’s lap times, but the first-lap incident changed everything. Franco’s top speed was consistently one of the highest of the weekend, confirming that the race setup the team had chosen was the right one.
And F1 themselves highlighted him as the speed master of the weekend:
🏁 The race
Franco started from P20 on hard tyres, a different strategy designed to stand out from the field and make up positions. At one point he found himself sandwiched between Lindblad and Bortoleto going up the hill into Turn 1. With Gasly exiting the pits on his inside and no space to go anywhere, contact was inevitable.
“I was sandwiched between two cars going up the hill into Turn 1 and saw Pierre exiting the pits on my inside. Lindblad came around the outside and I was left with nowhere to go and unfortunately, we made contact. The whole floor and sidepod were broken, which was enough not to continue to the end.”
After assessing the damage, the team made the right call to retire the car and protect it ahead of Mexico this week.
“It’s not nice to be watching the end of the race from the sidelines for a second race in a row, only this time due to picking up some damage.”
Briatore also commented that:
“Luck hasn’t exactly been on our side recently. Both cars picked up damage during the race, with Franco’s being significant enough not to finish the race. We head to Mexico City with the aim to improve our performance and score with both cars.”
🩵 We keep going with everything we’ve got
Mexico arrives this week with the whole FranClub43 behind him and the determination to turn things around.
See you from Friday at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez.
Tell us where you’ll be cheering Franco on in CDMX.
Cuéntanos dónde estarás en CDMX 🇲🇽
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