Alpine make decision on replacing Franco Colapinto as F1 team hatches unusual plan!
Franco Colapinto was drafted in to replace Jack Doohan but has also struggled to perform, as Alpine mull over their driver options alongside Pierre Gasly for their Formula 1 future
Franco Colapinto was handed a five-race deal by Alpine(Image: Formula 1 via Getty Images)
Franco Colapinto is set to continue to race for Alpine beyond this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix despite reaching the end of his initial five-race spell with the team. The Argentine was promoted to a race seat after Jack Doohan failed to score a point across the first six race weekends of the season.
Colapinto has also yet to register, however, and has struggled like his predecessor. The team sits rock bottom of the constructors’ championship and all 11 points they have on the board to date in 2025 were scored by lead driver Pierre Gasly.
The second seat remains an issue, even though boss Flavio Briatore has already given his public backing to Colapinto. The colourful Italian attacked Argentine media for putting too much pressure on the 22-year-old as he hinted that he would be given more time.
Briatore also rubbished suggestions that Colapinto had only been given an initial five-race deal, claiming that it had been made up by the media. However, it was specifically stated in Alpine’s initial press release back in May, when the driver swap that saw Doohan replaced was announced.
The race in Spielberg on Sunday is the last of that initial run of five given to Colapinto. But it is not likely to be his last with Alpine, for now, set to stick with the Argentine and give him more time to display the promise that he showed in the early weeks of a nine-race stint with Williams last season.
The Race reports that Colapinto is likely to still occupy that second Alpine seat at next weekend’s British Grand Prix. He is set to continue to represent the team on a race-by-race basis, an unusual arrangement in modern Formula 1 where drivers tend to have contracts for a defined period of time.
Colapinto’s Williams stint came in the latter stages of last season. That means he has never raced in F1 on the tracks on which he has been competing with Alpine so far this year, though Silverstone will offer more familiarity as that is where he drove F1 machinery for the first time in 2024.
And he referenced that on Thursday as he strongly hinted that he expects to still be racing for Alpine there next Sunday. Colapinto said: “To be doing my first FP1 with the team and doing a good job there next to Alex [Albon] was really good for my future and probably what put me in that situation to jump in later in the year.
“It was a very important weekend, and to be able to have that comparison now in the same track I’ve been driving the Williams last year, it’s good.
“It’s a bit more knowledge, a bit more experience. It obviously comes easier as well when you already drove an F1 at that track. You don’t get that shock of speed. So, yeah, looking forward to Silverstone, too, it’s a great track, full of high-speed, and I love driving there.”
