Franco Colapinto’s move to Alpine revives his F1 future — and pressures Jack Doohan

Few drivers in recent Formula One history have enjoyed the same kind of upward trajectory as Franco Colapinto.

Just 18 months ago, Colapinto was preparing to finish his second season in Formula Three — two levels below F1 — ahead of a move up to Formula Two for the next season. Williams had signed him to its young driver academy, identifying him as a bright talent for the future, but there was a lot of room for improvement.

But on Thursday, Colapinto completed a sudden switch to Alpine on a multi-year deal after the team swooped for his services following an impressive opening nine races in F1 last year for Williams as a surprise mid-season replacement for Logan Sargeant.

While Colapinto has only joined as its reserve and test driver for 2025, the move — and the length of the contract — makes him an obvious candidate for a future seat at Alpine, even if the team has maintained that Jack Doohan, Pierre Gasly’s new teammate for this year, is its race driver.

In confirming Colapinto’s departure, Williams F1 chief James Vowles said the team believed the agreement “represents Franco’s best chance of securing a race seat in 2025 or 2026,” – an indication of how this move will put the spotlight on the Argentine’s bid to get back on the grid full-time in the near future.

All F1 teams are trying to be the ones to sign the ‘next big thing’ in the sport. Six months ago, Franco Colapinto was not a name that most would have considered to be in those circles.

What followed from his debut at Monza, where he immediately proved to be an improvement on the struggling Sargeant, stunned many within the sport. Williams always had little to lose by giving him the final nine races of the season, even if it could not give him a seat for the following year after already signing Carlos Sainz from Ferrari to partner Alex Albon.

Yet Colapinto quickly exceeded all expectations, surprising both Albon across the garage and the wider Williams team by immediately getting close for pace in qualifying against a driver known for his one-lap pace and then battling to eighth in Baku, one of the toughest tracks in F1. Sargeant had only scored a single top-10 finish in a season-and-a-half at Williams. The performances led to a swell in interest from rival teams, particularly as the commercial pull of Colapinto became clear thanks to the influx of Argentine sponsors for Williams and F1 itself.

Alpine held an interest in Colapinto despite already having its 2025 lineup set, with Doohan being named as Esteban Ocon’s replacement two weeks prior to Colapinto’s debut. The only team that realistically had a seat available was Red Bull, which was considering options for the lineups across its senior team and its sister team, Racing Bulls. But a string of late-season crashes for Colapinto, including two accidents on one day at Interlagos, cooled that interest and prompted Red Bull to turn to its own young drivers as part of the reshuffle following Sergio Pérez’s departure.

Williams made clear that it would not stand in Colapinto’s way of a good F1 opportunity as long as the terms were right. Otherwise, it would keep him as a solid backup for its full-time driver lineup. In Las Vegas, Vowles said that if Colapinto was not in a race seat for 2025, it had plans for him to do plenty of private testing to keep him sharp, noting how a year out had worked for other drivers in the past, including Ocon, who spent a year out in 2019 as a Mercedes reserve driver.

Colapinto remained calm about his outlook for this year, saying that if he were not racing in F1, his goal would be to prove himself ready to get onto the grid for 2026 or 2027. But the long-term deals in place for Sainz and Albon at Williams from 2025 meant it would always be tricky to find a way into the team. The best route was the way out.

For Williams, the situation became a win-win. It could cash in on the buzz around Colapinto by entering an agreement with Alpine to release him from his contract, as well as taking the plaudits for unearthing a driver who Alpine executive advisor Flavio Briatore described as being “among the best young talents in motorsport right now” through its young driver academy.

For what seemed like a nine-race punt in a difficult season about laying the foundations for the future, it could not have worked out much better for Williams.

The same is true for Colapinto. He seized the moment when it mattered and sparked the kind of hype around a driver that is rarely seen. A lot of that was spooled up by his fervent fanbase back in Argentina, leading to comparisons to Lionel Messi and a national sporting impact on a par with that of the men’s national soccer team. Underpinning the associated sponsorship uptick with a clear natural speed — which did spill over into some crashes, as is the case with many rookies — set him apart as an appealing option.

That is why Alpine went to such lengths to secure him for the future, not wanting to miss out. It’s rare for F1 teams to make this kind of move, negotiating a release from a contract and signing a multi-year deal for a reserve driver. Alpine said that Colapinto would share reserve duties with Ryō Hirakawa and Paul Aron this season, but make no mistake: he is going to be the leader among its available young drivers.

Colapinto now has a viable route back onto the F1 grid with Alpine. The team locked in Gasly on a long-term deal last season, and the Frenchman’s performances through the back half of a difficult year were highly impressive. As it bids to end years of change under Briatore and team principal Oliver Oakes, both of whom arrived over the summer, he’ll be integral to its future.

Jack Doohan, seen here testing at Abu Dhabi in December, has one grand prix under his belt. (Clive Mason/Getty Images)

It puts pressure on Doohan before he even starts his first full season in F1. His last-minute debut in Abu Dhabi after Ocon’s abrupt exit was really just a warm-up before properly getting into the thick of the action this year. Before he can even get started as a full-time F1 driver, there is now someone with eyes on his seat.

Alpine has been clear that Doohan is its race driver going into this season. He will also undoubtedly be given every opportunity to perform and excel. The team would not have given him the seat in the first place if it did not believe he was up to the job. If he can get up to speed quickly this year and become a match for Gasly, it would go a long way to quelling some of the inevitable noise around his future that will surely dominate the early part of the season.

And if not? Well, that’s the reality of life in F1. Through his long and, at times, controversial F1 career, Briatore has never been one for sentimentality. We’ve seen that much already since his return to Enstone — he was in charge when the team last won F1 championships as Renault in 2006 — with the decision to shut the works engine program at Viry or the call to drop Ocon for Abu Dhabi if he wanted to be released from his contract to test with Haas post-race.

Briatore’s job is to make the team competitive again after years of underperformance. Signing Colapinto, a quick and commercially attractive driver, and in turn, applying a bit of pressure on Doohan before the season has even started may seem bold, but it may pay off handsomely in the long term.