\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t After a dazzling exhibition in Buenos Aires, Franco Colapinto got his wish and met Argentine men\u2019s national football team star Lionel Messi in Miami.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old visited the Inter Miami training ground ahead of the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix and got to meet the Qatar 2022-winner, as well as teammate Rodrigo de Paul.<\/p>\n
Images of the meetup were shared by Argentine oil and gas company YPF as part of a campaign featuring the three as ambassadors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe best energy in the world: Argentine energy. Thanks to our ambassadors,\u201d the state-owned energy giant wrote on Instagram. The post went viral and generated a huge buzz on social media.<\/p>\n
Colapinto had mentioned days before that he\u2019d \u201clove\u201d to meet Messi when interviewed during his Buenos Aires F1 exhibition. However, he insisted he\u2019d rather have it happen \u201cas a casual thing, not for a marketing exercise with cameras.\u201d<\/p>\n
Colapinto\u2019s passion for football It\u2019s not the first time the paths of the two Argentine stars have coincided.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In June 2025, Colapinto sent one of his race helmets as a gift to Messi. The race driver shared the news on his Instagram account, posting a story where the Albiceleste and Inter Miami captain could be seen holding one of the driver\u2019s helmets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The former Williams Racing man dotted the post with a couple of heart emojis, a show of his excitement at seeing Messi with his gift.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks for so much joy and so many lessons. All the best,\u201d wrote the Argentine motorist on the edge of the helmet\u2019s visor.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old hasn\u2019t hidden his love for football. A confessed fan of Argentine giant Boca Juniors, Colapinto has posed with the iconic blue-and-gold jersey many times and even had an exclusive tour of the famous La Bombonera stadium in 2022.<\/p>\n
In November 2024, while racing for Williams F1, he honored the Qatar 2022 World Cup winners with a special helmet design for the Qatar GP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After a dazzling exhibition in Buenos Aires, Franco Colapinto got his wish and met Argentine men\u2019s national football team star Lionel Messi in Miami. The 22-year-old visited the Inter Miami training ground ahead of the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix and got to meet the Qatar 2022-winner, as well as teammate Rodrigo de Paul. Images […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":57130,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,1373,1389,67],"tags":[175,1371,11847,1369],"class_list":["post-57129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-franco-colapinto","category-lionel-messi","category-messi","category-sports","tag-franco-colapinto","tag-lionel-messi","tag-messi","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}