Franco Colapinto will step into Jack Doohan’s vacated Alpine at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, making his debut for the Enstone-based squad.

The Argentinean driver has been given the nod to replace Jack Doohan, with the Australian replaced after the six-race mark that pre-season speculation had suggested all that had been agreed with Alpine.

Alpine drop Jack Doohan back as Franco Colapinto promoted

Franco Colapinto will race for Alpine at the Emila Romagna Grand Prix, having been assured of the next five races of the championship, taking over from Jack Doohan.

“Having reviewed the opening races of the season, we have come to the decision to put Franco in the car alongside Pierre for the next five races,” said Briatore.

“With the field being so closely matched this year, and with a competitive car, which the team has drastically improved in the past 12 months, we are in a position where we see the need to rotate our line-up.”

The 21-year-old steps up into the race team following what appears to have been something of a power struggle between the team’s senior management over the path forward with its driver line-up following months of speculation focusing on Doohan’s seat.

On Tuesday following the Miami Grand Prix, team boss Oli Oakes resigned from the team after less than a year. He stepped up into Formula 1 as a replacement for Bruno Famin as team boss last summer, but the confirmation of his resignation was made public shortly after it’s understood the confirmation of Colapinto’s promotion into a race seat was communicated internally to the team at Enstone.

The timing of this would suggest that Oakes was in favour of continuing with Doohan – or perhaps promoting Paul Aron, another leading prospect from the Alpine Academy. Both Doohan and Aron are alumni of Oakes’ Hitech GP teams, which race in various junior categories.

Suggestions that Oakes was fired from the team are understood to be inaccurate. The reasons behind Oakes’ departure have not been made public, with the Alpine team declining to comment on the situation. As a new and inexperienced team boss in F1, Oakes formed part of a triumvirate of power at Alpine, with Renault CEO Luca de Meo and his executive advisor Flavio Briatore overseeing the operation.

The confirmation of Colapinto’s promotion from reserve driver to race driver has been mooted since the tail end of 2024, with Briatore having become interested in Colapinto following a string of impressive performances as the rookie driver stepped up to replace the struggling Logan Sargeant at Williams.

Colapinto was even briefly linked with Red Bull’s driver line-up, but some high-profile crashes saw Colapinto’s star dim somewhat towards the tail end of the year before he steadied the ship in the final rounds.

Doohan – who is managed by Briatore – was signed to join Alpine’s driver line-up shortly after the Italian returned to Enstone last summer, just before Colapinto’s arrival on the grid.

Even before last season ended, speculation linked Colapinto with the Alpine seat occupied by Doohan, with the Australian making his debut at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Over the winter, Alpine signed Colapinto on a long-term deal that sees him tied to Enstone until at least 2029, initially being added to the pool of reserve and test drivers available to the team.

Alpine’s senior management of Briatore and team boss Oliver Oakes never shut down speculation that Doohan had only been assured of the first six races of the season, with the pressure seemingly piled on Doohan’s shoulders to impress during these outings.

While Doohan did show signs of progress – he outqualified experienced teammate Pierre Gasly in Miami – his inexperience showed in two first-lap retirements due to crashes, as well as a high-speed crash during FP2 in Japan. He is one of four drivers not to have scored points in the first six races, but Alpine has shown only sporadic pace with Gasly only securing points thanks to seventh place in Bahrain.

Doohan has not parted ways with Alpine but will drop back into the role of a reserve driver with the team. This means that Alpine’s driver line-up now consists of two drivers brought into F1 through other team’s driver academies, with Gasly a product of Red Bull’s programme and Colapinto having been part of Williams, while Doohan and Aron have been part of the Alpine Academy in recent years.

Why might Oliver Oakes have quit the Alpine F1 team?

If Oakes’ departure is not related to these driver decisions, a lack of autonomy over the team for which he is ostensibly the boss, or he and Briatore not seeing eye to eye, one hypothetical could be that a potential sale – perhaps to the Mazepins – is not going ahead.

Former Uralkali chairman Dmitry Mazepin has been historically closely linked to Oakes through the Hitech operation and, while Alpine have always strenuously maintained the team is not for sale, actions taken in the past year have made a potential sale easier to facilitate – Renault cut its factory engine programme at Viry-Chatillion and will switch to a customer Mercedes engine programme next season.

With Viry repurposed by the Renault Group, potential buyers would thus ‘only’ have to buy the F1 team at Enstone, and not the two-pronged entity including the engine department.

Mazepin, a Russian oligarch whose son Nikita raced for Haas in 2021, was in the paddock at the three-day pre-season test in Bahrain, with the nature of the reasons for his visit remaining unclear.

Mystery surrounded his visit, with the 56-year-old understood by PlanetF1.com to have used a so-called rotational pass, which does not require prior guest approval and was not applied for by a team, Formula 1, the FIA or the promoters at the Bahrain International Circuit.

With Mazepin believed to have not been a guest of either Mercedes or Alpine – both teams with which the Mazepins have had historic links – Oakes said of the Russian businessman, “I’ve said hello to him. I haven’t met him.

“He’s a friend of mine [and] I used to be together with him in Hitech.

“He was here catching up with another friend of his. It’s nice to see him.”

It has been suggested that Oakes’ historic ties to Mazepin were not viewed favourably by Briatore.

If Oakes had been in place to try to facilitate a transitionary sale to his own Hitech organisation, perhaps with Mazepin and Vladimir Kim backing, this potential deal falling through could also be hypothesised as being a reason for Oakes’ departure.

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