Briatore turns up the heat on Colapinto after Alpine gamble falters
Alpine spent big to pry Franco Colapinto out of his Williams deal. They benched Jack Doohan after six races to make room. Two months on, Flavio Briatore isn’t hiding his frustration that the bet hasn’t paid off.
Colapinto has yet to score in eight starts for the team and sits near the foot of the standings, only ahead of the man he replaced. That’s put his long‑term future in a shade of blue nobody at Enstone wanted to see this soon.
“I’ve seen everything already, I don’t think I need to see anything anymore,” Briatore said when asked whether Colapinto had shown enough to be part of Alpine’s plans beyond 2025. “For this driver, it’s very difficult to cope with this car. These cars are very, very heavy, very, very quick.
“For the young driver to be put in Formula 1, maybe was not the timing to have Franco in Formula 1. Maybe [he] needed another one year [away] to be part of Formula 1.
“I’m not happy when I look at the result. What is important is the result. Is really not, not what I expected from Colapinto.”
That’s unusually blunt even by Briatore standards, and it lands after a Budapest weekend that offered little respite. Colapinto showed flashes at Williams earlier this year, which is precisely why Alpine went hard to sign him, but adapting mid-season to a different car and a feisty intra-team yardstick like Pierre Gasly has exposed raw edges.
Briatore also admitted Alpine may have mishandled the handover. “We changed Doohan with Franco Colapinto and maybe Colapinto has too much pressure to be in Formula 1,” he said. “He had two or three races with [Williams] and he did very well but maybe to be in the team with a good driver like Pierre and always in competition with his team-mate, maybe we put too much pressure on him.
“Sometime we forget that the driver is a human being, and we need some time to understand exactly what’s going on… I think our mistakes are trying to underestimate the human part of the life. I know we’re always looking for the timing. Maybe I missed something in the management of the driver for the future.”
Alpine had quietly set a five‑race review for Colapinto when he arrived. That came and went without fanfare or a public vote of confidence, and the silence since has said plenty. Behind the scenes, Briatore has sounded out alternatives. Names like Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas were floated, though both are now committed to Cadillac for 2026. The message is clear: Alpine is scanning the market while Colapinto tries to steady the ship.
There’s a broader context, too. Enstone’s timeline is out of sync with a driver learning on the job. The team has made impatient choices this year, first in switching Doohan out, then in expecting an instant lift from a 22‑year‑old who barely had time to memorize the steering wheel settings. Gasly, with years under his belt, has been the reference and the scoreboard reflects that. It doesn’t make Colapinto a lost cause—it makes him a rookie thrown into a political program mid‑stride.
The awkward part for Alpine is optics. When you pay a release fee and then talk publicly about “not being happy with the result,” it reads like buyer’s remorse. Briatore did at least leave the door ajar to fix the process as much as the pace: the comments about pressure and management hint at a recognition that Alpine’s environment hasn’t exactly been a nurturing greenhouse this summer.
What happens next? The calendar will give Colapinto a few more swings before decisions harden for 2026. He needs a clean weekend—no scruffy Saturdays, no lap-one chaos, something that looks like a baseline to build on. Alpine, for its part, needs to decide whether it’s constructing for the long term or auditioning drivers on a rolling, results‑only contract. Right now, it feels like both, and that’s rarely a comfortable place for a rookie.
For the record, Colapinto didn’t ask for any of the headlines. He asked for a seat and a chance. Alpine gave him that, and all the pressure that came with it. The next races will tell us whether this was a miscast or just a rough first act.
Photo: Franco Colapinto with Alpine at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
