Colapinto remains calm despite five-race stint to prove himself at Alpine F1

“If your 100% is just to perform at a very high level in Formula 1, which is where I want to get to as soon as possible, that for me should take less than half a year; five to 10 races.”

One of the recurring narratives over the first quarter of the 2025 F1 season has been Carlos Sainz’s apparent struggles to adapt to the Williams after four seasons at Ferrari. He cast it as a battle to remap muscle memory after learning to drive a car in a very specific way to extract maximum performance.

Franco Colapinto has now been thrust into the spotlight after replacing Jack Doohan at Alpine – and, just as it was widely known that Doohan had been given a six-race window in which to stake a permanent claim to the seat, the clock is publicly ticking for Colapinto. He has been given just five before “reassessment”.

Naturally, ahead of Colapinto’s first public appearance in the Alpine during the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix weekend, this has been the principal line of questioning directed at him. And his response was to draw a very firm line under it.

“We will see once I drive,” he said in Imola. “But, you know, I have a great opportunity ahead. I’m happy to be back in F1. I don’t even think about the five races.

“I’m just in a happy place and I’m dealing with it very well. I think at the moment I just want to get back in the seat and drive. Of course, after you heard Carlos and especially Carlos, I think, saying that he needs like 10 races to get used to the car, I think five is not enough for me. If I even drove nine in all my life in F1.

“So, yeah, it probably takes me a few more races, probably a couple more than five to get up to speed and maximise everything out of the car. But it is what I have.

“I just want to maximise it, enjoy it and try to do the best for the team.”

Nobody was expecting him to, for instance, echo the words of Ian McKellar Jr to this reporter during the hideously wet 2001 Le Mans 24 Hours (“To be honest, I was shitting myself…”), but Colapinto’s response was the most honest and direct appraisal of his situation he could make without venturing down that road. His arrival comes freighted with expectation from South America and pressure from the man holding the reins at Alpine, Flavio Briatore.

The mantra “control what you can control” is popular with elite sportspeople and Colapinto illustrated it perfectly here. The five-race timeframe is out of his hands; if he watches the clock ticking it may get in his head, negatively impacting his results.

This level of maturity may come as a surprise to some. Colapinto demonstrated youthful exuberance as well as great confidence last year when he climbed into the Williams mid-season and was ballpark-quick as team-mate Alex Albon from the off… while also clattering into the trackside furniture more often than the team would have preferred.

He also has a nine-race weekend head start on where Doohan was when he first raced the Alpine. And, unlike Sainz, he is not having to make an adaptation from a race-winning car to a midfielder.

Franco Colapinto, Alpine

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

Indeed, the indications are that Alpine’s A525 is relatively strong in terms of cornering performance, and that it is held back chiefly by its Renault power unit. Pierre Gasly was among the fastest through the Esses at Suzuka, for instance – a quick set of direction changes which require fluidity and poise.

Of the five race venues to come, only Canada is an out-and-out power circuit where expectations will be low.

Those who have worked with Colapinto back him to be fast enough to convince Alpine to retain him, even if five races isn’t enough for him to reach a point where he is as quick as he possibly can be in the A525. All he has to do is be quicker, more complete, and show a more decisive improvement trajectory than Doohan.

“I know he’s immensely quick,” said Williams team boss James Vowles this week, “so I think irrespective of whatever deadline they’ve set, he’ll do a good job in that period of time.”