Briatore sets November D‑Day for Alpine’s 2026 seat as Colapinto faces crunch run
Alpine will take its 2026 driver call to November, with Franco Colapinto handed a critical late‑season audition to keep his seat alongside the newly re‑signed Pierre Gasly.
Executive adviser Flavio Briatore confirmed the timeline after the Dutch Grand Prix, making it clear the team wants a few more races to see whether Colapinto’s recent uptick turns into something they can bank on.
“For the moment, I believe Franco is doing a good job,” Briatore told Sky Sports. “He was a bit inexperienced in the beginning, like a lot of the rookies. Now, in the last three, four races, he’s much more consistent, no mistakes… maybe it’s Franco, maybe we see. We have another four or five races to choose and that’s when we’ll see. It is November, we need to make a decision.”
It’s a sharp pivot from how Alpine started its year. The team opened 2025 with Gasly and rookie Jack Doohan, only to bench the Australian after a handful of rounds and pay a fee to extract Colapinto from Williams. On paper, it was a move for form: the Argentine had banked five points in blue earlier in the season. In reality, the restart has been brutal. Since switching, Colapinto is, as it stands, the only driver on the grid yet to score.
That stat explains the tone around Enstone. Gasly’s future is sorted with a fresh deal through 2028. Colapinto’s isn’t. Briatore’s public line—encouragement laced with a deadline—reads like a statement of intent: Alpine want a clearer picture before committing their second seat into the new rules cycle.
The wider market moved under them, too. Two of the obvious “plug-and-play” options—Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Pérez—are off the board, both signing with the incoming Cadillac operation for 2026. Briatore insists neither was ever a live Alpine target, though he admits there were conversations.
“No, really. I talked with a lot of people,” he said. “I talked with Bottas as well. We talked with Toto [Wolff] as well at the time, but really, there was never a discussion for Bottas to drive for Alpine. I think Alpine helped Bottas a little bit to sign the contract with Cadillac. We did some marketing. But this is the reason, honestly. I like Valtteri because he’s a super driver… We have a different idea, but it’s nice to have Valtteri back… I’m looking for something else.”
“Something else” is doing plenty of work there. Read between the lines and Alpine’s brief sounds like this: keep Gasly as the reference, find either a high‑ceiling talent who can accelerate with the 2026 regs, or a driver with enough spark to move the needle commercially as well as competitively. Colapinto can still be that guy—he’s tidy, quick on Saturdays when the car allows, and has stopped the errors lately—but he needs a result to go with the promise. One point would change the conversation. A run of them would likely end it.
Briatore’s return has undoubtedly stiffened Alpine’s posture in the market. There’s a new steeliness to the messaging: fewer platitudes, more timelines, and a willingness to say the quiet part out loud. Helping shepherd Bottas toward Cadillac while admitting as much was pure Flavio—a pragmatic move that keeps Alpine friendly with a veteran driver and a new entrant without muddying their own strategy.
In the garage, the effect is simpler. Colapinto’s brief is clear: keep it clean, keep it quick, and turn the recent consistency into something that lights up the timing screens on Sunday. With the decision window now set, every lap between here and November carries weight.
Gasly’s extension gives Alpine the continuity they’ve been missing. The second seat will define how bold they want to be for 2026. Colapinto’s fate? That will be decided on the stopwatch, not the rumor mill. November isn’t far away.
