Colapinto plays the long game as Alpine weighs 2026 call
Franco Colapinto isn’t pretending the numbers flatter him. He’s the only active driver yet to score a point this season, the A525 has slipped out of the fight, and Alpine has made no promises about 2026. But he’s also not panicking.
There’s no timeline on his future, no internal deadline he’s been told to sweat over. And for now, that suits him. “I don’t know, and I’m not really focused too much on that,” he said on Beyond the Grid. “I want to keep building on this year. There is more to learn, and I have much more to find, but I’m feeling better in the car, in the team, and I’m feeling that we are doing a good job together.”
If that sounds like a driver trying to keep the noise out, it’s because he has to. Flavio Briatore, back as Alpine’s executive advisor, has already put it out there: the 2026 seat alongside Pierre Gasly comes down to a straight fight between Colapinto and reserve driver Paul Aron. Gasly’s staying; everyone else is auditioning.
On paper, Colapinto’s season is a hard sell. The points column reads zero, and a handful of costly shunts haven’t helped his case after the winter move from Williams. Alpine’s own trajectory hasn’t been charitable either. Gasly’s 20 points were hoovered up in the first half of the year when the car still had a sniff of the top 10; the second half has been a grind.
Strip out the headlines, though, and Colapinto hasn’t folded under the weight of it. Inside the garage, the head-to-head isn’t a blowout: he trails Gasly 7–4 in both qualifying and races. For a first season in new colors with a car that’s gone backwards, that’s competitive enough to keep the conversation alive.
The question for Alpine is what matters more: the raw ceiling they believe Colapinto has, or the clean, bankable execution Aron has built his reputation on as a reserve waiting in the wings. Briatore’s presence hints at a more ruthless Alpine, one happy to roll the dice if it thinks there’s a sharper option for the new rules era.
Colapinto, for his part, is trying to make the choice difficult the old-fashioned way. “It’s no secret that the car is not where we want to be, and it’s not good enough at the moment to win the points,” he said. “But it will come the time that it is, and I want to be ready for that. So that’s, to me, the main focus at the moment: go race by race and moment by moment, and let’s see where we end up.”
That’s the tightrope he’s on: minimize the errors, get closer to Gasly on Saturdays, find the days when the A525 breathes a bit easier and turn them into something tangible. Alpine doesn’t need a miracle result to make a decision, but it does need proof that, when the car peeks into Q3 or a chaotic race opens a window, Colapinto will cash it in.
Aron won’t make that easy. The Estonian has been open about his target: make the 2026 grid. He’s in every briefing, on every track walk, and by now knows exactly where the Alpine is weak and where there’s lap time to be found. That internal pressure is real.
What Alpine does next will tell us a lot about its appetite for risk. Keep Colapinto and you’re betting on growth and continuity into the new regulations. Hand the keys to Aron and you’re pressing reset, hopeful of a higher baseline and fewer repair bills.
For now, Colapinto keeps the blinders on and the message simple: keep learning, keep putting laps in the bank, wait for a car that can actually fight. It’s pragmatic. It’s also his best shot. When the points chances return — and they will, even for this Alpine — he can’t afford to let them pass. That’s how you move a debate that, right now, is stuck in neutral.
