It was a tough Hungarian Formula 1 Grand Prix for Argentine race driver Franco Colapinto, who finished 18th and is yet to collect points for his championship tally.

Hopes were high for Colapinto in the build up to the race. On Saturday, he managed to reach Q2 for the first time since the Canadian GP, qualifying in front of teammate Pierre Gasly for only the second time in his short Alpine career. After Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli had a lap time deleted, he was set to start in 14th place.

However things quickly soured on Sunday. Colapinto struggled on the launch, putting two tires off the track on the second turn, and losing positions to Haas’ Esteban Ocon, former teammate Alex Albon from Williams and Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg. But the worst was yet to come.

On lap 14, Alpine produced one of the worst pit stops of the season, wasting seven seconds to complete the switch to hard tires. It was enough to send Colapinto out dead last, around 22 seconds away from the car in front.

The Argentine driver proved to have solid pace, turning in around the same lap times as the pack in front, but it all went to waste on lap 36 as he was summoned to the pits for a second time. Once again, it was a catastrophic work from Alpine, who “beat” their own record and spent 7.2 seconds to make the tire switch. Colapinto emerged last again, this time around 14 seconds from teammate Pierre Gasly in 19th.

An angry Franco Colapinto let his frustration vent, exclaiming “My god” after leaving his pit box.

The Argentine took a position on lap 50th, as Haas’ Oliver Bearman was forced to retire, and then in the final lap, when Pierre Gasly was given a 10 second penalty for causing a collision. It meant the two Alpine finished in 18th and 19th respectively, last of the runners.

“We’ll have to check it with the engineers in the box now,” Colapinto told the press after the race. “It wasn’t a bad launch in itself, but I didn’t have any grip in the rears, so I ran wide in the second turn. I had made a couple places, but gave a lot more then and there.”

The Argentine driver blamed the race strategy for some of the team’s woes, arguing that they stopped too early, which put him in a position to be blue flagged to let front-running drivers twice. 

“It was a race to forget about,” Colapinto said. “I don’t think we had a bad pace, but it was a disaster. We didn’t execute well, we had a lot of mistakes in the launch, in the pitstops, so it just wasn’t a good day.”

F1 now goes into its summer break, with all action halting for the next three weeks. The sport will return on August 29, for the Dutch Grand Prix weekend in Zandvoort.