Franco Colapinto will make his debut for Alpine in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola after the Argentine replaced Jack Doohan for the next five rounds of the year.
Executive adviser Flavio Briatore has opted to gift Colapinto the seat that was long expected to become his after joining Alpine from Williams having now lost patience with Doohan. The Australian is one of four drivers who did not score a single point through the first six rounds.
He also penned a lengthy list of crashes, which saw Doohan cost Alpine more in repairs than any F1 driver so far in 2025 has managed. The 22-year-old’s last chance before resuming his reserve driver role also saw Doohan and Liam Lawson crash on the first lap of the Miami GP.
Alpine have only replaced Doohan with Colapinto for the next five rounds, though, with the Enstone outfit planning another evaluation process ahead of the British Grand Prix in July at Silverstone. So, he will join Pierre Gasly at Imola then in Monaco, Spain, Canada and Austria.
Pierre Gasly admits Alpine must sacrifice race for qualifying pace to be strong at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix
Colapinto has never raced at Imola in a Formula 1 car ahead of the 2025 Emilia Romagna GP and his debut for Alpine this weekend. But the 21-year-old has positive memories from F1’s support races, having won the Sprint Races amid F3 and F2’s Imola meets in 2022 and 2024.
Gasly also has reasonably high hopes for Alpine at Imola with the 29-year-old now targeting a top-10 finish in the Emilia Romagna GP. It would mark a large turnaround from a year ago when Gasly ended the 2024 edition in P16, behind his then-teammate Esteban Ocon in P13.
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The Frenchman also knows that Imola’s tight layout does not naturally promote chances for easy overtakes. So, Gasly admits he and Colapinto need to sacrifice working on Alpine’s race pace and invest a lot of time during practice honing their set-up to qualify strongly at Imola.
Gasly said, via quotes by AUTOhebdo: “There have been some crazy editions in recent years. And each time, qualifying has proven extremely important as overtaking is very difficult. We will therefore focus on our pace over one lap.”
Pierre Gasly has only scored points in one of the Alpine driver’s four visits to Imola
Ocon was Alpine’s lead driver in qualifying for the 2024 Emilia Romagna GP as the now-Haas ace secured P12 on the grid with a 1:15.906 lap time in Q2 to the 1:16.381 that Gasly set for P15. Gasly had set a 1:16.015 lap in Q1 but would not match, or better, his effort during Q2.
It preceded a third point-less trip to Imola for Gasly, who came 12th in 2022 whilst still with AlphaTauri before joining Alpine in 2023 when the Emilia Romagna GP was cancelled due to flooding in the area. His P7 finish in 2021 for AlphaTauri is Gasly’s only points at Imola yet.
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Gasly has also only scored points once this year, with P7 in the Bahrain Grand Prix, which is Alpine’s sole top-10 finish thus far. Briatore will hope replacing Doohan with Colapinto can now help Alpine to claim more top-10 finishes ahead of his first race for the team at Imola.
Colapinto also made his Formula 1 debut the last time the championship raced in Italy after Williams promoted their academy prospect to replace Logan Sargeant at Monza. He earned a P12 finish in the Italian Grand Prix, before registering his first points with P8 in Azerbaijan.
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