Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko has insisted that Franco Colapinto was never in contention to replace Liam Lawson at Red Bull ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix.

It comes after PlanetF1.com revealed that the Alpine reserve driver was not one of Red Bull’s options before the decision was taken to replace Lawson with Yuki Tsunoda.

Helmut Marko: Franco Colapinto never seriously considered by Red Bull

Lawson has paid the price poor his poor start to the F1 2025 season, with the New Zealander demoted to the Racing Bulls (formerly AlphaTauri) junior team after struggling across the opening two races in Australia and China.

Red Bull’s swift action has seen Tsunoda rewarded with a promotion to the senior team, with the 24-year-old set to become Max Verstappen’s third team-mate in the space of four races at his home race in Japan this weekend.

Wild rumours last week claimed that Red Bull had renewed their interest in Colapinto, who was signed as Alpine’s reserve driver for F1 2025 after an impressive cameo with Williams in the second half of last season.

However, PlanetF1.com learned from multiple sources close to the situation that the reports were wide of the mark.

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Marko has shed more light on the situation, revealing that he met Alpine team principal Oliver Oakes, a member of Red Bull’s famed driver academy during his own racing career, to discuss the progress of Fionn McLaughin, the 17-year-old Red Bull junior competing for Oakes’ Hitech team in British F4.

He went on to stress that the possibility of Red Bull signing Colapinto was never discussed.

Marko told Motorsport.com: “I have a good relationship with Ollie Oakes.

“He has regularly run some of our drivers in his various teams across the junior categories. One of his drivers is currently racing in the British F4, for example.

“That was the reason I met with him. Colapinto wasn’t a topic.”

Colapinto was briefly linked to Red Bull last year after a number of starring performances for Williams, with team principal Christian Horner spotted visiting Williams’ hospitality unit to discuss a potential deal at the Brazilian Grand Prix.

As reported at the time by PlanetF1.com, however, Red Bull’s interest in the Argentine cooled significantly after Colapinto suffered a number of accidents in the closing weeks of 2024.

Marko insisted that Colapinto has never been under “serious consideration” by Red Bull due to his performances in F2, where new Racing Bulls star Isack Hadjar proved “consistently faster” than his rival.

He said: “Colapinto had a very strong debut in Formula 1. And of course, you have to keep an eye on how things are developing.

“But in the end, he wasn’t a serious consideration.

“We had Hadjar, who was consistently faster in Formula 2 than Colapinto and, as has now been proven, turned out to be the right choice.”

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Marko’s comments come after Ralf Schumacher, the former Jordan, Williams and Toyota driver, claimed that Horner had been pushing for Red Bull to sign Colapinto over Tsunoda before being overruled.

Appearing on the Backstage Boxengasse podcast, he said: “If they didn’t have Max Verstappen, who is somehow pulling the coals out of the fire, [Red Bull would be in trouble].

“You don’t really know technically where the car is going, lll the engineers seem a bit unsure.

“Then Dr Marko comes along and internally they don’t really agree on the drivers because one thing was clear.

“Dr Marko obviously wanted to take two drivers from his own squad for Red Bull, that was Lawson or Tsunoda.

“Christian Horner doesn’t think much of either of them, he wanted Colapinto, who, of course, shot himself in the foot when he had those three crashes [at the end of 2024].

“Then, of course, Horner was missing the power in the team at the time as Dr Marko was simply stronger and now everything is turning around again.”

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