Alpine Team Principal Flavio Briatorore has taken care of the pressure on Franco Colapinto by admitting the performance and results of the Alpine Driver, are not what he had expected.
Alpine chose to promote Colapinto from his role of reserve administrator after just six rounds of the current season, to replace Jack Doohan after the Miami Grand Prix at the beginning of May. The 22-year-old Argentin has to score another point in seven starts so far he picked five in nine races last year for Williams and Briatorore (shown above with Colapinto) Now wonders if he needed more time to develop before he got another racing chair.
“I think I already see everything,” said Briatore. “I don’t think I should see something more.
“It is very difficult for these drivers to deal with this car. These cars are very, very heavy, very, very fast. For a young driver to place in Formula 1 … Maybe it was not the time to have Franco in Formula 1, maybe he needed another year to be part of Formula 1.
“I am not happy. What is important is the results. He tries very hard, and we try very hard with the engineers to please him with everything, but it really isn’t what I expected from Colapinto.”
Despite those comments, when he pushed the rest of this season and in 2026 alongside Pierre Gasly on his plans for the second chair in Alpine, Briatore suggested that he could have been blamed on the way he treated the Rookie.
‘[Alpine has made] Not many changes, “he said.” We have changed Doohan with Colapinto. And maybe Colapinto [had] Too much pressure to be in Formula 1. Last year, he had two or three races with [Williams]Where he did very well. But perhaps to be in the team with a good driver like Pierre, and always in competition with the teammate, we may have put too much pressure on him.
“I think we should consider that. The driver is a person and we have to understand exactly what happens in the minds of these children. Because these are young children – 19, 20, 22, 23 – and I think it is a mistake to underestimate the human part of the driver.
“We always look at the timing. Maybe I missed something in the management of the director, Colapinto. I honestly don’t know for the future.”
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