Franco Colapinto, USA News (Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez): The Argentine driver completed a remarkable performance at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, but a ten-second time penalty for failing to respect a yellow flag relegated him to 15th place and left him without points.
Franco Colapinto crossed the finish line of the Mexican Grand Prix matching his second-best result of the year with a solid seventh-place finish, but a ruling by the sports authorities changed the outlook hours after the checkered flag. A ten-second penalty issued by FIA stewards stripped the driver from Pilar of the six points he had earned and dropped him down to the fifteenth position.
The measure taken by the governing body was due to his failure to reduce speed sufficiently in a section of the circuit marked with a yellow flag. Although the driver and the Alpine team presented evidence, telemetry logs, and photographic material to justify the maneuver, the stewards determined that he had prior margin to slow down and dismissed the immediate appeal.
The impact was total for the Enstone garage, as his teammate, Pierre Gasly, received an identical penalty, leaving the French structure empty-handed after having touched a collective harvest of eight units. With the classification reordered at the desks, Isack Hadjar (Red Bull) and debutant Ryo Hirakawa (Haas) inherited the final scoring positions by advancing to ninth and tenth place, respectively, while Alpine evaluates whether to formally appeal the penalty before the sports courts.
