Young, fast, and replaceable – How the current state of Formula 1 led to Franco Colapinto’s arrival at Alpine

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Youth is back in vogue

One of the things that the 2024 season made clear is that the next generation of F1 talent is here. Last year’s season started with everyone relying on driver experience to deliver results, as no line-up changes were made between the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024. But this year? Six out of ten teams had a rookie on their roster starting their first full season in F1.

And it’s all thanks to Carlos Sainz needing his appendix removed. While quite unfortunate for the Spaniard, it also meant that F2 driver and then-Ferrari reserve, Oliver Bearman, got to show his skills at the 2024 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. He made a truly memorable first impression during the weekend, just nearly missing out on Q3, and improving from P11 to P7 in the race itself.

But Bearman was not the only young driver to show what the next generation has to offer. One of the most notable examples came when Williams brought Colapinto himself as their reserve to replace a struggling Logan Sargeant. Across the final nine races of 2024, Colapinto impressed with his speed and adaptability, scoring a total of five points to Sargeant’s none. This gained significant attention from teams across the grid, with even Red Bull reportedly considering him as a replacement for Sergio Perez for some time (a series of crashes and retirements may have deterred them however, ultimately leaving the door open for Alpine to strike a deal with Williams for a five-year contract with him).

Bearman and Colapinto served as a reminder that young, talented drivers are able to hit the track running and get fast results. Both were able to score points with little to no previous F1 experience, and showed incredible talent and potential. And with the likes of Kimi Antonelli, Isack Hadjar and Gabriel Bortoleto in the talent pool, it’s easy to see why a desire to secure up and coming talent has seldom been higher.

Yet in reminding us that young newcomers can deliver results on arrival, this may have also pushed teams to consider how much patience and slack they are willing to give before trying something new. And that brings us to…

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The season of the switch

And with the current talent pool being what it is, the pressure is on for young, fresh drivers to deliver, lest their team look for better alternatives among their peers. If someone just isn’t able to maximize the performance of a car, a mid-season swap almost feels more favorable compared to giving them time to develop and grow.

Line-up changes happen in F1. Usually they’re because someone is sick, or injured, like when Liam Lawson took over while Daniel Ricciardo healed a broken hand in 2023. But in recent years, the number of performance-based mid-season changes feels like it has sky-rocketted. Most notably, between 2023 and now, Red Bull and VCARB alone have gone through a combined seven different drivers on their rosters.¹ This is in stark contrast to 2018-2022, where the only mid-season change that happened across the entire grid was a swap between Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon.

While the sister teams have a reputation of being quick to act when things are not going well, they aren’t the only ones to have done so. Colapinto’s arrival at Williams in place of Sargeant became one of the biggest talking points of the season, as he rose to the occasion almost immediately. He was able to match pace with a far more experienced Albon, and even outperformed him at times, like when he picked up a point in P10 at the US Grand Prix in COTA, while Albon was far behind in P16.

What’s more, Alpine are evidently quite comfortable making big moves part-way through the current season. This was made explicitly clear even before the Doohan/Colapinto switch, with executive advisor and acting team principal, Flavio Briatore, making comments such as, “If there’s a driver who isn’t making progress, who isn’t bringing me results, I change him. You can’t be emotional in F1.”

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Short-term swaps, long-term plans

For now, Colapinto’s upcoming stint on Alpine’s main roster is set to be only five races long. This is a curious choice on Alpine’s part. On the one hand, it gives Colapinto – who can easily still be considered a rookie – a very short window to show what he can do. But on the other hand, the same could be said for Doohan, who has driven a grand total of just seven races with the team to show his worth. And with how things stand, these quick turnarounds feel like more of tryouts than a genuine commitment to any driver for the long-term.

And that may very well be what Alpine is going for, because the final thing tying all of this together is timing. We are in the final year of the current regulations, with a pretty significant set of changes waiting for us in 2026. With that in mind, teams will need to carefully decide how much time they are willing to dedicate to developing for the current regulations, and how and when they will want to shift focus to 2026 onward.

As things stand, Alpine is struggling to get consistent performances out of their car. While Doohan’s inexperience may play into his lack of success, even senior team member Pierre Gasly has hit a few road bumps, making it to Q3 one weekend and getting stuck in Q1 the next. And it’s not just this year. Alpine has been struggling under the current regulations for some time, with a steady drop in points from 173 in 2022 to 120 in 2023, and just 65 in 2024.

With that in mind, it is quite possible that Alpine is using this opportunity to set themselves up for success in 2026. They have already made several moves towards this, from personnel overhauls to committing to Mercedes power units from next year on. And when it comes to drivers, they wasted no time in securing a strong pool of young talent to choose from, signing Colapinto as one of four reserves at the beginning of the 2025 season, alongside Paul Aron, Kush Maini and Ryo Hirakawa (who has since moved to Haas).

And with Jack Doohan not having yet scored any points, and having incidents like his crash during the Japanese Grand Prix, Alpine could be looking to test out their options for the future. Committing to only five races with Colapinto for now gives them plenty of flexibility going forward. Based on how things go, we may see them commit to Colapinto, return to Doohan, or even bring in yet another one of their reserves for a third test run.

With the way that the next generation of drivers has presented themselves, the growing expectations on those drivers to excel immediately, and Colapinto’s positive results in Williams, it is of little surprise that the team is choosing this moment to try him out. Like with most things in F1, this is just one of several steps the team is taking to ensure that they maximize everything for the incoming era of F1.

What is going to happen with Doohan and Colapinto going forward remains to be seen, but one thing is for certain - this switch didn’t come from just Alpine alone, but from the high-pressure, high-stakes era of Formula 1 in its current state.

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Footnote:

¹ AlphaTauri/VCARB: Nyck de Vries, Daniel Ricciardo, Yuki Tsunoda, Liam Lawson and Isack Hadjar. Red Bull: Max Verstappen, Sergio Perez, Liam Lawson, Yuki Tsunoda