F1 Panel: Would Alpine be right to replace Jack Doohan with Franco Colapinto?

Everyone who follows F1 closely saw it coming… The rumours about Jack Doohan’s premature sacking from Alpine after just a handful of races in 2025 started circulating in the paddock as early as last November.

The name of his possible replacement was known then too: Franco Colapinto. The former Williams driver wouldn’t just leave Williams to polish the substitute bench — and it sounds like he could soon be asked to stand up, get dressed and get into the cockpit of the A525. 

But is it too early to sack Doohan? And was his start to 2025 that bad that he deserves to be replaced after just six rounds of the season?

Our international panel of writers have their say.

Doohan was doomed to fail, so why wait?

Let’s say that Jack Doohan has been under such pressure since the beginning of his journey as a full-time driver for Alpine — pressure that has been largely fuelled by the (sometimes not so) ambiguous statements from his bosses — that one could argue whether Alpine is right to consider replacing him is almost irrelevant. The question always seemed less about “if” and more about “when.”

Doohan’s days seemed numbered from the start, and the dice appear to have been loaded in favour of Colapinto. The Australian couldn’t have been unaware of this. However, he didn’t do himself any favours by rarely matching his teammate’s performance on track and by getting involved in costly incidents — the most obvious being his big and silly crash at Suzuka.

So, while it’s true that Doohan’s seat never seemed secure beyond a few GPs anyway, he also failed to show enough, and certainly not as much as Colapinto did during his short stint at Williams last year. (The Argentine also had some big crashes but at least he scored points.) In short, this is not a move that presents any major sporting risks and could offer some attractive financial opportunities, so why wait?

— Fabien Gaillard

He had six races to prove himself — not all got as much

It’s not a question of whether Alpine is right or not, it’s a question of results. Jack Doohan hasn’t really been there since the season started less than two months ago in Australia, and six rounds in F1 these days is enough to know if a driver can deliver or not.

Let’s look at the facts. There’s a narrative — a word much used in the paddock last weekend in Miami — that Doohan has shown flashes of raw pace on one lap. But Pierre Gasly has outqualified him 6–2 so far — sprints included — and the average gap between the two is 0.367s. If that’s Doohan’s best card, it doesn’t look too good.

When it comes to racing, Gasly has finished ahead of Doohan in five out of six races. If you’re wondering in which Grand Prix the Aussie beat the Frenchman — well, that was when Gasly was disqualified for a technical infraction in Shanghai after finishing 11th, way ahead of Doohan.

On the other hand, Alpine have a driver in Franco Colapinto who has already proved he can swim when thrown in at the deep end, as was evident when he started his racing tenure with Williams. He scored points in Baku — with a Q3 appearance — in just his second race, and again in Austin, on his way to completing his first five Grands Prix with an average finish of 10.6. Doohan’s so far — albeit in different machinery — is 15.6.

It’s true that the Argentinian then had a couple of big crashes in Brazil and Las Vegas, but the former came in very tricky rainy conditions at Interlagos, while the latter happened as he was giving his all to get into Q3 — which is a very different scenario to crashing on a Friday at Suzuka. Also, Alex Albon later commented that the Williams FW46 had become more difficult to drive at that stage of the season.

You can really feel for Doohan if this is truly the end of his time with Alpine — his situation could probably have been different if Colapinto hadn’t been waiting on the sidelines. But you can’t choose when you get into F1, and F1 doesn’t wait for anyone. After all, he got six races to prove himself — something not everyone got this season…

— Federico Faturos

Does Briatore now ‘do a Wurz’ to Doohan?

The story of Jack Doohan and Flavio Briatore reminds me — an Austrian — very much of the story of Alexander Wurz and Flavio Briatore. In early 1998, Wurz was Formula 1’s next big thing — if only for a few months. But when he refused to sign a management deal with Briatore and subsequently fell out of favour, his career took a sudden downturn.

Doohan is now learning the same lesson: that it’s difficult to sustain a Formula 1 career within a Briatore-led team unless you have Briatore’s full backing. One could argue about whether Doohan is a future world champion or not. Personally, I don’t think so. But the fact that speculation about his replacement with Franco Colapinto surfaced during the off-season — long before the first race had even taken place — hardly provides the kind of stable environment a young driver needs to unlock his full potential.

Would Doohan perform better if his future weren’t constantly being called into question? Yes, most likely. Would his performances be strong enough to justify keeping Colapinto — with his talent and the financial incentives he brings — on the sidelines indefinitely? Probably not. At least not in the long run.

It’s a pity that Oliver Oakes didn’t seize the many opportunities he had to put an end to the rumours once and for all. A statement that includes “as of today” is not a statement. Just like you don’t give a compliment by saying, “Yes, but…” That’s something Toto Wolff once taught me.

I would have liked to see how good Doohan could have been if his team had given him full trust. But I think that ship has sailed. Poor Jack was never really given a serious chance.

— Christian Nimmervoll

Money from Argentina won’t hurt, but it’s about performance first

I would personally like to see Jack get more time, because I do believe in giving rookies enough seat time to settle — see Yuki Tsunoda — and by all accounts he is a good guy. But F1 is obviously a brutal, performance-led business, and other debutants have shown that with the current tools at their disposal, they can be expected to perform at a high level immediately. That means not only showing flashes of pace, as Doohan has done, but more consistent, trouble-free performances that teams can rely on to come out on top in the closest midfield battle in F1 history.

For a variety of reasons, it hasn’t happened yet for Doohan — which is a shame.

The question is now: Will that consistency come in good time or not? It feels obvious that it’s a question of when, not if, Colapinto ends up in the seat. Otherwise, why go through the trouble of prying him loose from Williams — which also assumed he would get promoted eventually? If the team feels Doohan’s adaptation is going to take too much invaluable time, or just won’t really materialise at all, then you can see why it would slot in a ready-made replacement ahead of a busy European run-in rather than delay the inevitable. Colapinto’s commercial links won’t hurt, but I do think this is about performance first.

— Filip Cleeren

Doohan simply failed to impress – and that matters in F1

I really feel for Jack. There aren’t many guys in the paddock as humble, polite and approachable as he is, and if the Miami race was his last in F1, that’s really sad. Losing a job he loves and was so desperate to get is not something you’d wish on anyone.

Yet, he must have been aware things may change quickly if he didn’t deliver. And ultimately, he didn’t. Yes, as a rookie he was put in a very difficult situation and asked to perform straight away, but the situation would’ve been a lot different had his path to F1 been more successful. And you can’t separate the two parts of a career. The ones who prove themselves to be excellent in junior categories tend to get more time and patience from their F1 bosses. And in most cases, they prove themselves a lot faster than those who didn’t really shine in previous championships.

Doohan got as good a chance in F1 as he probably deserved — and it was, after all, in his hands to make it work. In extremely difficult circumstances, under enormous pressure — yet he still got that chance.

Franco Colapinto’s path to F1 wasn’t that straightforward either — yet when he got that Williams seat, he did exactly what the F1 paddock values so much: he impressed.

And that’s ultimately all there is to know…

— Oleg Karpov