Nelson Piquet Jr fears ‘the whole world’ will come after one midfield driver if he struggles at Imola

Franco Colapinto will make his return to the Formula 1 paddock in Imola with Alpine after the team decided to replace Jack Doohan after six races.

Doohan will be moved back to the reserve driver role for the next five races, as Alpine will assess whether to continue with their current lineup for the rest of the season.

A decision will be made on whether to refresh their lineup for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in July, should Colapinto fail to bring any improvement to their results.

Alpine are currently ninth in the Constructors’ Championship with only Pierre Gasly having scored points for them at the Bahrain GP.

Colapinto impressed at Williams when he replaced American Logan Sargeant at the end of 2024, but Nelson Piquet Jr believes he will need to do something straight out of the box at Alpine if he wants to survive beyond the current five-race agreement when speaking on the Pelas Pistas podcast.

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Nelson Piquet Jr thinks Franco Colapinto will need to match Pierre Gasly in Imola practice

Colapinto joined Alpine as part of their reserve driver pool in January and took part in a private test with the team at Monza recently. According to Karun Chandhok, Colapinto crashed while testing for the team in their 2023 car at Monza.

Piquet believes Colapinto will need to be on the pace immediately at Imola and match Gasly to prevent too much criticism.

“The position for him is, I won’t say it’s terrible that he’ll drive in F1, but it’s one of the most brutal there,” said Piquet.

“He’s with a team boss who is a j—, and the whole world will be putting pressure on him if he doesn’t run close to Gasly in the first practice session. And then Doohan’s guys, the Australians, will come after him.”

Who could replace Franco Colapinto if he doesn’t impress?

Should Colapinto fail to impress in his five races, there are a few options that Alpine could choose from after signing a pool of drivers to their reserve team.

One obvious choice would be Paul Aron, who was signed to the team last year after impressing in Formula 2 with Hitech.

Aron was said to be a favourite of Oliver Oakes, who resigned as team principal at Alpine due to personal reasons in the hours leading up to the switch between Doohan and Colapinto.

Flavio Briatore will assume his role from Imola, alongside his position as an executive advisor to the team.