How Franco Colapinto can cement his Alpine F1 seat to become Pierre Gasly’s permanent team-mate

For the second time in two seasons Argentina’s Franco Colapinto has found a way onto the Formula 1 grid during the season.

But the circumstances could hardly be more different. Replacing Logan Sargeant at Williams, the team’s junior driver was very much a left-field pick, having impressed team boss James Vowles during a wet and tricky Silverstone FP1 session as well as simulator work.

This time it felt like it was a question of when rather than if Colapinto would reappear on the grid after being drafted in by Alpine as its reserve driver, and incumbent Jack Doohan didn’t shine brightly enough to extend his rookie campaign beyond the first six rounds.

Colapinto has been officially handed five races by Alpine’s executive advisor Flavio Briatore, who is assuming most leadership duties after team boss Oliver Oakes’ resignation while supported by the likes of racing director Dave Greenwood and other key management members. Another evaluation will then take place in between the Austria and Silverstone rounds to decide over the remainder of the 2025 season.

So, what does Argentina’s F1 hope need to do to make Alpine’s seat truly his own?

Jumping in at the deep end, again, as Alpine scraps for points

Cynics will say the seat is already his to keep anyway, with Doohan never an option particularly fancied by Briatore, and a dead man walking as soon as the more experienced and commercially attractive Colapinto was available. But while Colapinto’s Argentinian backing definitely helps, it will only go so far if the 21-year-old now doesn’t deliver on track.

Alpine desperately needs results, having scored fewer points than its car is really capable of, and as F1’s midfield is tighter than ever Pierre Gasly will need some backup to move Alpine up from a lowly ninth place in the constructors’ table.

That means Colapinto will have to repeat his 2024 heroics, when he jumped in at the deep end in Monza and immediately looked at ease with the Williams. After a creditable 12th place on his debut, Colapinto then scored four points with eighth in Baku and added another point to his tally in Austin.

But the opening leg of the 2025 season has shown that scoring points is far from an easy job for any midfield outfit. Behind fifth-placed Williams, teams have been scrapping for every single point in a midfield battle decided by hundredths – not tenths. Grid position has been hugely important, with every single detail making the difference between advancing to Q3 and being dumped out in Q1.

Gasly’s season so far has underlined how difficult it has been for Alpine to get a result, despite having a car with decent potential. Gasly shone with seventh in Bahrain, before ending up on the wrong side of the midfield battle at other races.

Therefore it would be unfair to expect regular points from Colapinto, but his directive is to take it one race at a time, stay as close as possible to the Frenchman and then see if the car is competitive enough for points on a given weekend.

Learning from Doohan’s mistakes, and his own

Doohan’s rookie campaign was not helped by a series of costly errors, including a big crash in Suzuka practice. That bears some parallels with the second half of Colapinto’s rookie stint with Williams, who lost some momentum with a huge qualifying accident in Brazil, before crashing out in a wet race in admittedly very tough conditions.

Colapinto’s unnecessary qualifying shunt in Las Vegas was less forgivable, but like the rest of his nine-race Williams cameo it did provide invaluable experience that he was able to digest over the off-season, and must now put to use at Enstone.

Alongside his simulator duties Colapinto has done several TPC tests with an older Alpine car, which ensures he is much better prepared for his second chapter in F1 than his first.

That will likely also apply to the huge scrutiny he is under, with Colapinto’s 2024 debut turning him into an overnight celebrity in Argentina, a country that is always yearning for its next sporting heroes.

The spotlight on the 21-year-old, and the swell of support both at races and on social media, has been extremely intense, with passions at times boiling over into something a bit more sinister in a minority of supporters.

Between managing his expectations at home and at Enstone, his mission remains the same. Block out the noise, and shadow his team-mate.