BARRETTO: How Franco Colapinto grew to become an on the spot F1 hit – and what’s subsequent for the Williams rookie

It is a measure of simply how spectacular Franco Colapinto has been as a mid-season substitute for Logan Sargeant at Williams that media in his residence nation of Argentina are already heralding him as a genius and mentioning him in the identical breath as footballing legends and countrymen Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona.

The 21-year-old scored factors in solely his second race, scored in two of his first 4 Grands Prix and was throughout the top-12 in every of the primary 5. That was in a midfield automobile and on a basis of only a handful of unrepresentative laps in an FP1 session at Silverstone earlier this 12 months, and a few extra mileage within the one-day end-of-season younger drivers check in Abu Dhabi final 12 months.