After grabbing a top ten in China and scoring his first points, Franco didn't just shine on the track. Inside the factory, the young guy from Pilar spoke to his people from the heart and the video is already blowing up.
After nailing a massive tenth place in China and scoring his first point with Alpine, Franco Colapinto showed that besides having sharp reflexes behind the wheel, he's a great dude under the helmet. The French team dropped a video on their socials where you see the Argentine driver sending a message to the guys at the Enstone factory and it went viral fast. It wasn't some scripted speech or a corporate line. It was pure heart.
"I just wanted to stop by and say hi. The post race meetings are usually pretty rough because things don't always go the way you want. But I think this is the first one where we can really celebrate, with a result that puts us up there. Honestly it gives me incredible excitement and I wanted to share that with you," Franco said with a huge smile on his face.
Far from stopping there, the Argentine knows very well that behind every driver there's an army of geniuses working full time, so he kept it real with his people: "I'm really proud of the work you did over the winter, you built a genuinely fast car and we made giant leaps. Let's not settle for that, we want way more. I know you have incredible motivation not just to be in the top ten but to go fight harder up front and battle for points. That's where we want to be and that's what we're going to achieve together."
The message didn't take long to go around the world and even a former F1 driver jumped on the praise train.
Jolyon Palmer, who now works as an analyst for the championship, highlighted how smart Colapinto was on track: "He drove with unbelievable intelligence. He used the speed exactly when he needed it. Yeah he had some bad luck with the safety car timing because he was running sixth and the plan got complicated with the hard tires, still he kept the pace and took that small but huge point. A really really good race from him. He showed an enormous level of awareness, beyond the Ocon crash that cost him chances to score more," Palmer said on F1TV.
Meanwhile the social media buzz hit numbers nobody expected. Fan comments started pouring in right away and even his teammates sent him shoutouts. A huge digital storm kicked off because people realize they're dealing with a different kind of driver, one of those guys who wins you over by showing a side you don't often see in athletes at that level.
Truth is Colapinto isn't just leaving good impressions, with that natural and sincere style he's already one more in the Alpine family. This is just the beginning.