Why Alpine is right to stick with Franco Colapinto in self-created driver turmoil

Franco Colapinto’s immediate F1 future appears secure, with Alpine set to continue with the Argentine driver for the foreseeable future.

It’s been a challenging 2025 for Colapinto, who is going through the difficult second album phase, but he appears to have retained the support of Alpine and, more importantly, Flavio Briatore, as he bids to turn his form around.

Franco Colapinto set to continue in F1 2025

The plight of Alpine’s second driver over the past few months is a major side story of 2025, almost the equivalent of Red Bull’s ongoing issues to find someone to pair with Max Verstappen.

While Pierre Gasly has been plugging away, scoring points here and there when the A525 allows for it, neither Colapinto nor his seat predecessor, Jack Doohan, have managed to trouble the points-scorers.

It’s not that long ago since Colapinto was regarded as the next big thing in Formula 1, with teams falling over themselves to try to secure his services as he exploded into Formula 1 with some impressive points finishes for Williams after being parachuted in to replace the struggling Logan Sargeant.

It was against expectation. While Colapinto had proven solid across a range of championships in the junior categories, his last (and only) single-seater championship win came in Spain’s F4 series in 2019.

But, like Kamui Kobayashi did some 15 years ago, sometimes F1 just clicks for a driver and in his first few weekends, Colapinto proved a revelation as he raced without any sort of pressure or expectation.

But, as interest in him grew, and expectation did grow, Colapinto started to crack. Incidents and accidents, including a huge one in qualifying in Las Vegas, saw Red Bull quickly lose interest, but Alpine wasn’t put off.

Over the winter, the team signed Colapinto on a long-term deal, believed to be for five years, and placed him as the reserve driver behind Gasly and Doohan.

Doohan, as one of F1 2025’s rookies, was immediately up against it and, right from the start of the season, had to bat off questions about feeling the pressure from a highly-rated driver who, on the face of it, was only one or two strong results ahead of him.

After six races, Doohan was out, and Colapinto was in – initially on a five-race deal, but this quickly transitioned into a race-by-race arrangement that hasn’t yet changed.

After eight race weekends in the A525, Colapinto, like Doohan, is mired on zero points in F1 2025. Gasly, in the other A525, has scored all 20 of the team’s points and, if he had a teammate of similar strength, the Enstone-based squad would likely be fighting with Racing Bulls and Haas over eighth place.

At the summer break, Colapinto has shown a little improvement, out-qualifying and beating Gasly at the Hungaroring, but blotted his copybook straight after the weekend by crashing heavily in Pirelli’s tyre test on Tuesday, adding more pre-break workload and cost to the Enstone workforce.

On paper, it’s the right time to make a change, if Alpine wanted to, perhaps by admitting that Doohan wasn’t given a fair crack at the whip and slotting him back in, or calling upon its leading reserve driver, Paul Aron, and giving him a chance across the second half of the year.

But all the signs are that Colapinto is set to remain for the second half of the season, and given ample time to try finding greater pace and consistency.

It’s exactly the right thing for Alpine to do at present, in a bid to try giving their overwhelmed driver a chance to regain his confidence; this lack of confidence behind the wheel being something the Argentine has spoken about at length in recent weekends.

Modern F1 has been somewhat skewed by the discovery of generational talents emerging quickly in their debut seasons, with the likes of Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri very quickly showing they can perform heroics despite a lack of experience.

But this quality is what makes these drivers stand out, and it’s far more usual that a driver can take months, if not years, to adjust to Formula 1 and display their full potential.

The unique nature of the current ground-effect cars further muddies this picture. For instance, just look at how experienced drivers like Carlos Sainz and Lewis Hamilton have looked completely out of their depth against their teammates this year, despite being known quantities across the years.

F1 drivers need time to adjust to the sport

An example of a driver taking time to find their feet in F1 is Sebastian Vettel. Against the backdrop of great early results, such as fourth in China in 2007, he spent most of the first half of 2008 crashing and having collisions, only to come good in the second half of the year – even if he did ruin a big day for Red Bull at Fuji when he collided with Mark Webber.

Red Bull, of course, developed a reputation for a lack of patience with drivers over the years, but those early struggles for Vettel eventually worked out for the team as he developed confidence, speed, and consistency to eventually go on to win four consecutive Drivers’ Championships.

Overseeing Toro Rosso in those days was Franz Tost, who has worked with many rookie drivers over the years. The Austrian is perhaps one of the best-placed individuals to have some insight on the matter of rookie psychology and, according to the now-retired former team boss, drivers simply need longer adjustment times than they often get.

“I always say, if a rookie is coming to Formula 1, he needs a minimum of three years to understand what’s going on here,” Tost said in 2023.

“It’s as I always say, it’s the learning process and the ‘crash period’ because if the drivers don’t crash, they don’t know the limit. This is a credit you must give them; otherwise, it doesn’t work.

“There was no driver not crashing. I remember back to Sebastian, maybe in the first races he came back in the first lap, most often without the front nose. It’s part of the game.”

It’s understandable that teams may have lost some of this patience since. After all, in a budget cap era, every bit of broken carbon fibre does eat into a team’s budget, and the reluctance to continue with a risky driver relative to a potentially safer pair of hands does have logic.

It’s for this reason that, for once, a team showing patience with a struggling driver should be commended for this approach, giving a psychologically battered Colapinto the reassurance he needs in order to try re-finding the confidence and talent he displayed when the pressure wasn’t on last year.

Of course, Colapinto’s marketability and impressive sponsorship roster will help in this regard, with his arrival coinciding with Alpine securing big-money sponsors from across Latin America, including telecommunications giant Claro, and fintech operation Mercado Libre.

But Colapinto’s Williams arrival showed there is an underlying talent there, one which can be brought back out if Alpine can unlock what he needs from the car. It’s worth bearing in mind that Colapinto didn’t have a pre-season testing programme with Alpine this year, meaning he’s been learning ‘on the job’ across his eight Grand Prix weekends so far.

Jack Doohan vindicated, but it’s of no consolation

Of course, in an ideal world, Doohan would have been shown similar patience. Indeed, the Australian had started to show signs of improvement immediately prior to his demotion back to a reserve, but after just seven race weekends in total, he was shuffled back into obscurity.

It was a mismanagement of his potential, but with Colapinto now in the position, it’s crucial Alpine doesn’t fall into the same trap of starting all over again with someone else. This isn’t to say that Paul Aron, as the most likely candidate, isn’t potentially the right driver either, but Colapinto – like Doohan – simply deserves more time to adjust.

His more assured race weekend in Hungary thus couldn’t have come at a better time to assuage any doubts that Briatore may have over his signing, but, after committing to a long-term deal, burning out the potential of Colapinto at this point simply doesn’t make any sense.

Gasly, as a known quantity in the upper midfield, is a dependable yardstick, meaning Alpine will get a fair idea of just how well Colapinto is doing as he races at more familiar circuits in the second half of the year, having driven them last year for Williams.

If he fails to improve and continues to disappoint across the next three months or so, expect Alpine to cry enough and stick someone else in for the final races of the year, in a bid to evaluate what to do for F1 2026.

Should Colapinto be dropped, it’s unlikely other teams will clamour for his services, so the pressure is well and truly on. Should he respond and improve, then Alpine’s long-term investment in him could look very canny indeed. If not, then the option is there is to try Aron, as a product of its own Academy, or snap up a seasoned veteran such as Sergio Perez or Valtteri Bottas (should either still be available by then!).

Like Red Bull in recent years, it’s a driver mess entirely of its own making, but the cleanest path out of it is to continue showing commitment and support to Colapinto.

Given that teams are restricted to a maximum of four drivers across a season, outside of force majeure scenarios, the team can still take a punt on another driver before season-end – the big question mark here would be whether the team plumps for Aron, who is gaining driving experience on a loan deal with Sauber for its mandatory FP1 rookie appearances, or gives Doohan a second chance.

Doohan has been a clear loser through all of this, but has remained onside with Alpine’s decisions in public; a situation that could change if a return to an Enstone cockpit doesn’t materialise.

The Australian will no doubt be feeling somewhat vindicated that Colapinto has not represented an upgrade for Alpine, with the pair now on roughly the same number of Grand Prix weekends each, but that vindication doesn’t yet mean any chance of climbing back behind the wheel.

While a solution will no doubt eventually emerge, it appears very likely that one, perhaps two, drivers will come out the poorer for it.

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