Alpine’s Franco Colapinto was involved in a terrifying near-miss at the start of the Australian Grand Prix which exposes one of the new F1 era’s key concerns.
The new half-ICE, half-battery powered cars can have massive speed differentials depending on the amount of energy being pushed out creating dangerous situations.
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This is a concern both during races and, perhaps most pressingly, at the start of them as raised by Oscar Piastri during pre-season testing when he said it was a “borderline safety” concern.
On Sunday that became reality when Colapinto had to take sudden evasive action at the race start to avoid Liam Lawson’s stationary Racing Bulls car, steering towards the wall and barely avoiding a collision.
Race winner George Russell reacted in terror when he saw the incident for the first time in the cooldown room post-race with third-placer Charles Leclerc also looking shocked.
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“I think the concern remains. Today the start was a bit of a near miss,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said of the incident.
“There was a huge speed differential on the grid. We can hope for the best or we can just do something further to make sure that we reduce this speed differential.
“This is a very technical matter. I don’t think we should go too far into ‘we should do this or we should do that’.
“My appeal, my call, is to say we should do more. Keep attention on the start, because at some stage that will become a problem.”
Major speed differentials at the start also dramatically impacted the racing with Charles Leclerc going from fourth to the race lead by the first corner.
Some of the biggest crashes in F1 history have occurred at race starts, most notably the 13-car pile up to begin the 1998 Belgian Grand Prix.
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