Why Colapinto is still fighting against a serious Alpine weakness, and for his F1 future

Amid frequent speculation over his future at Alpine, Franco Colapinto vows to keep chipping away at the underwhelming results that he’s achieved while struggling with a difficult 2025 Formula 1 car. 

For a variety of reasons, Alpine’s switch from Jack Doohan to Colapinto hasn’t worked out yet. After six race weekends marred by several incidents and no points, Doohan was relieved of his duties after the Miami Grand Prix, and his replacement hasn’t scored points either despite having seven races in the saddle. 

The Argentinian has yet to finish higher than 13th, and his best qualifying position was 12th in Canada – the only time he outqualified team-mate Pierre Gasly thus far. In a similar vein to Doohan, Colapinto has yet to get to grips with the 2025 Alpine car, especially over a full race distance. 

Some of that is due to his own inexperience, while the Alpine A525’s unpredictability and narrow operating window is making it much harder for him. 

The struggles with a recalcitrant 2025 car aren’t limited to the second Alpine seat, however, as Gasly has also lamented its driving characteristics. From pre-season testing, Alpine’s intrinsic pace looked promising at times, but unlocking it has been a different matter – with Gasly’s seventh place in Bahrain a rare exception. 

Add in its baked-in power unit weakness, as well as improvements made by Sauber, Aston Martin and Haas in the ensuing races, and that means Alpine finds itself on the back foot even more. It explains why Gasly’s Q3 spot in Silverstone came as such a positive surprise to him and the team, and the Frenchman capitalised in a mixed weather race to finish a shock sixth. 

“The car is obviously very tricky and easy to make a mistake,” Gasly said. “I think in qualifying generally I’m able to really extract a lot from the car. Obviously, difficult to drive and it’s not easy, and I do feel that pushing to the extreme limit. 

“Overall, we slide a lot, which on a new tyre you manage at times to just get some decent performance out of it. But ultimately in race conditions, when you have more degradation, hotter conditions etc, it’s not something which is competitive over a full race distance.” 

Gasly vs Colapinto qualifying head-to-head

PIERRE GASLY	5-1	FRANCO COLAPINTO
10	Emilia Romagna	15 (no lap time in Q2 – crash in Q1)
18	Monaco	20 (+0.603s in Q1)
8	Spain	19 (+0.253s in Q1)
20 (+0.433s in Q1)	Canada	12
10	Austria	14 (+0.442s in Q2)
10	Great Britain	20 (+0.732s in Q1 – crash)

While Gasly can lean on his experience to salvage results, Colapinto has been more adrift and has found it much harder than Gasly to adjust to the car, which starts with getting a comfortable set-up right out of the gate on Friday. This leaves him with too much work to do to get close enough to Gasly by qualifying. 

There has been progress, most notably in Canada, but an early mistake in British GP qualifying resulted in a wasted opportunity to confirm if steps had been made. 

“We need to try and understand how to bring the performance already on Fridays, because then it’s a lot of time we’re trying to find from Friday to Saturday,” Colapinto said before the Silverstone weekend. 

Franco Colapinto, Alpine

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images

“We need to try to make the car a bit more predictable. We know our weaknesses. The car is quick when it’s in the window. As soon as it goes out of that, it becomes quite tricky to drive. Pierre has similar issues. But, of course, after he’s been driving the car for three years, it’s very easy to kind of understand where the limit is.

“We need to try to keep working together to make that car more predictable, a bit easier to drive for us. When the temperature goes up too much the car becomes more tricky and more unstable, and we use too much the rear tyres. I think it’s a combo that ends up snowballing in a direction that I don’t want.” 

Reports from Argentina suggesting that Colapinto will definitely stay in the car for the remainder of the 2025 season are understood to be wide of the mark. Instead, he remains at Alpine on a race-by-race basis.  

But while the Argentinian is on a short leash with de facto team leader Flavio Briatore and needs to show more performance, the 2025’s car’s general difficulties, the team’s focus on 2026 and his generous commercial backing from Argentina are all mitigating factors that give him a bit more breathing space. 

Alpine could keep swapping, for example by putting its other reserve driver Paul Aron in the car, but its biggest priority has to be fixing the car’s performance and driveability before burning through yet another driver. 

F1 midfield battle in the world constructors’ championship

Colapinto was at least unfazed by frequent questions about his position in Britain, even after the qualifying faux-pas, which didn’t help his cause: “I’m not very concerned. Of course, there are always talks. I just need to keep working and trying to help the team to improve the car.”

Franco Colapinto, Alpine

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images

Yet the prospects of Alpine radically changing its fortunes seem limited due to the Enstone team’s conscious choice to fully focus on 2026 at an early stage, which explains why it was out-developed by its direct midfield rivals.

“This has to go with our overall choice for this year,” said technical director David Sanchez. “We know for us there are big opportunities in 2026. We may not have been pushing so deep in this season with developments like some others. But when we see how next year’s car is evolving and the rate is quite high, we are quite happy with our choice.”

Gasly added: “We know why since the start of the year we want to focus on 2026, which I fully back the team for doing it. It also means that we didn’t develop that car as much as some other teams might have done, so it put us a bit on the back foot for this year, with hopefully some better dividends for next year.”

That also explains why a repeat of a late 2024 resurgence, topped off by a dream double podium in Brazil, will be more difficult this time around. When asked if he is resigned to the team finishing last in the championship, Gasly replied: “Realistically, are we going to fight for it [higher up the midfield]? Yes. Is it achievable? Some might say no, some might say yes. Last year people got rid of us [in the fight for sixth] way before the end of the year and managed to turn it around. If you want my honest opinion, this year is slightly different.” 

Gasly’s sixth place at Silverstone, Alpine’s best result of the season so far, has given it hope. But for Colapinto to be in a similar position to capitalise on such opportunities, he realises there’s still a lot of work to do. 

“I think that comes with experience with the car, it comes with knowing exactly what you want, how to maximise the performance very quickly in the weekend. It’s what I’m not doing, and I think that’s purely for not knowing the car,” he pointed out. 

Franco Colapinto, Alpine

Photo by: Jayce Illman / Getty Images

“Last year was probably easier for me [at Williams] but this year, as I’m struggling with that confidence on all those entries, with that instability, with that feeling of nervousness and that just feeling that the car is not as sometimes well connected, it makes me not have the confidence probably that I need early in the weekend. 

“It’s little by little but it’s still coming, that performance. Not as quickly as I would like, but the solutions to the issues are coming and we are finding them. To me, that’s the main thing.”