BARRETTO: How Franco Colapinto became an instant F1 hit – and what’s next for the Williams rookie

It’s a measure of just how impressive Franco Colapinto has been as a mid-season replacement for Logan Sargeant at Williams that media in his home country of Argentina are already heralding him as a genius and mentioning him in the same breath as footballing legends and countrymen Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona.

The 21-year-old scored points in only his second race, scored in two of his first four Grands Prix and was within the top-12 in each of the first five. That was in a midfield car and on a foundation of just a handful of unrepresentative laps in an FP1 session at Silverstone earlier this year, and some more mileage in the one-day end-of-season young drivers test in Abu Dhabi last year.