Briatore cool on F2/F3 as Alpine leans in-house for Gasly’s next teammate
Flavio Briatore isn’t shopping in the junior ranks. Alpine’s executive advisor says the current churn in Formula 2 and Formula 3 makes them a poor compass for hiring, and his search for Pierre Gasly’s next teammate is focused squarely on names he already knows.
The shortlist? Franco Colapinto and Alpine reserve Paul Aron, with an outside lane still open for Jack Doohan if the team pivots. That’s the state of play, with Briatore publicly unimpressed by the stop-start form of today’s young guns.
“I don’t see any other possibility,” he told The Race when asked about looking beyond Alpine’s own pool. In his view, when a future star arrives, you feel it. “The good guys go ‘boom’.”
Briatore’s benchmark is the era of drivers who made the ladder look like a moving walkway. He points to the vintage examples: Michael Schumacher scorching Group C, Fernando Alonso stunning Minardi on debut, Lewis Hamilton’s relentless strikes in GP2. Even recent history offers clean reads — Charles Leclerc, George Russell and Oscar Piastri each won Formula 2 at a canter in their rookie seasons after taking the F3 crown. Felipe Drugovich’s 2022 F2 title came with an enormous margin. Those were seasons, Briatore argues, that told you what you needed to know.
Today? The titles have been tighter, the peaks and troughs steeper. The last two F2 championships were settled by slim margins, and race-to-race volatility has become the rule, not the exception. “Did you see the races in F2 and F3?” Briatore said. “One guy wins a race, next he’s 14th. Then he’s P3, a week later P12. In our time it was very clear. Hamilton was there — first, second, second, third. Rosberg, bang, bang, bang. Now, take away Max. The rest? [shrugs].”
It’s not just nostalgia talking. The modern junior landscape bakes in chaos: spec cars, tight fields, tyre windows with razor-thin margins, and sprint formats that punish the smallest misstep. That’s great entertainment; it’s not always a neat scouting report. Layer in F1’s limited testing and the path from “fast on Saturday” to “F1-ready on Sunday” gets murkier still. Teams have leaned heavily on simulators and FP1 mileage to bridge the gap. Briatore, ever the old-school talent spotter, wants a clearer signal in the noise.
Which brings Alpine back to what it knows. Colapinto is on the list, as is Aron in his reserve role, both familiar to the team and its systems. Doohan remains in the conversation too, if Alpine decides to reset the board. None are slam-dunk rookies in the Leclerc/Russell/Piastri mould, but that’s partly Briatore’s point: the pipeline isn’t throwing up obvious choices, so he prefers drivers already embedded in Enstone’s orbit.
There’s also timing to consider. With the 2026 regulation reset looming and development work already shaping the next generation of cars, continuity is currency. Alpine needs a partner for Gasly who won’t take half a season to find their feet while the factory wrestles with fresh aero and power-unit trade-offs. Reliability, feedback, and a stable reference matter as much as raw pace.
Of course, the junior ladder hasn’t stopped producing quality. Leclerc and Piastri made F1 look easy on arrival, and plenty of current race winners built their reputations in exactly the volatile cauldron Briatore dislikes. But Alpine’s advisor isn’t paid to put a sheen on the market; he’s paid to pick a direction. Right now, his compass is pointed inward.
The subtext of Briatore’s stance hints at Alpine’s wider rebuild. If your car isn’t a sure thing, the last variable you want is a driver still discovering how to thread an out-lap on cold tyres without burning the rears by Turn 3. Consistency isn’t a luxury; it’s survival. And if F2 and F3 can’t reliably separate the best from the merely good over a season, Alpine’s evaluation has to happen closer to home.
So don’t expect a left-field rookie scoop unless something dramatic changes. Gasly’s next teammate will likely come with a familiar pass to the Enstone gym and a login for the simulator. It’s not the most romantic approach, but Briatore’s not here for romance. He’s here for certainty — or as close as F1 ever allows.
And if the next Hamilton or Alonso is truly out there? As Briatore would put it, we’ll know. They’ll go “boom.”
