One week on from being slapped on the wrists by Alpine for ignoring team orders, Franco Colapinto enters a crucial set of races to secure his Formula 1 future.
At the end of last weekend’s United States Grand Prix in Austin, Colapinto was ordered to hold station by Alpine while fighting team-mate Pierre Gasly for 17th place.
Colapinto ignored the order and passed Gasly anyway, given the Argentinian was coming under pressure from Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto behind.
It is understood Alpine bosses were not amused by Colapinto’s actions, as both Gasly and Colapinto were critical on fuel and it was touch and go whether or not they would get lapped by leader Max Verstappen, which eventually eased their fuel concerns significantly.
Colapinto’s spur of the moment transgression is a small chink in his armour, but it is not expected to be a decisive factor in his longer-term F1 future, as otherwise the 22-year-old has shown himself to be a good team player alongside Gasly.
Alpine’s useful FP1 benchmarks
But poignantly, the episode precedes one of several crucial weekends for Colapinto as he keeps fighting for his future. While the Argentinian is expected to stay in the car until the end of the year, he has yet to convince Alpine’s Flavio Briatore and Steve Nielsen of a spot on the grid next year.
Pierre Gasly, Alpine, Franco Colapinto, Alpine
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
Colapinto is being weighed up against the team’s reserve driver Paul Aron, with Jack Doohan now unlikely to return to an Alpine cockpit. Colapinto and Estonian Aron will both be in the car during Mexico’s Friday F1 outing, which provides Alpine with a useful benchmark of the pair.
Aron is highly rated by the Enstone squad and has conducted a huge amount of simulator work, while last conducting a private test with a two-year old Alpine in Monza last month.
The Estonian will also be in Gasly’s car in FP1 at the season finale in Abu Dhabi, although the team is expected to have made its final 2026 driver call by then, aiming for a November decision.
Alpine’s car woes muddying the waters
Switching to Mercedes power units next year, the team is hopeful that there are opportunities for the taking in F1’s new rules era, so whoever is in the second seat alongside Gasly will have to carry their own weight and contribute to the team’s on-track success. And while Colapinto is bringing significant commercial backing from his Argentinian sponsors, the prize money on offer in F1’s 2026 midfield battle outweighs that.
But what is making things difficult for Alpine’s driver evaluation is just how poor and difficult to drive its 2025 car is. In recent weeks Colapinto has shown more competitively against Gasly in qualifying, but the peaky Alpine A525 remains difficult for the Argentine to find confidence in.
“I’m struggling generally with the car and on my side it’s tricky to find the right balance at the moment,” he said on Thursday in Mexico City. “This car is difficult to drive. The compromises we make, I tried to find an easier and more consistent car in Austin and I ended up with the opposite.
“These last six races personally I’ve been finding pace, and I’ve been quite strong but it’s also true that we cannot show any real personal pace – because at the end of the day we are a bit too far.”
It will now be intriguing for Alpine to see what Aron can do in his first-ever outing in its 2025 car, having completed two Friday practice sessions on loan at Haas. While Colapinto and Aron aren’t understood to have identical run plans, as Aron’s job is to collect data to help Gasly and the team, FP1 will still provide a useful benchmark. At the end of the day, the stopwatch never lies.
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– The Autosport.com Team
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