It’s Time for Alpine to do a 180 on Jack Doohan and Franco Colapinto

Decisions on personnel in Formula One can make or break a team’s season and BWT Alpine’s decision to drop rookie Australian driver Jack Doohan after just six races in 2025 is proving to be yet another misguided one from the French team. 



Still smarting from missing out on another promising Australian racer in Oscar Piastri, who now leads the championship driving for McLaren, 2025 looked like a year when Alpine would support the talented and loyal Doohan, who has been with the team for years, alongside its main driver, Pierre Gasly. 



There was promise. 



However, instead of putting their arms around the driver, who starred in F3 and F2 cars in previous seasons, pressure came from the very start as newly appointed team advisor, now Defacto team principal Flavio Briatore, signed Argentine Franco Colapinto after he himself impressed in the Williams car in 2024. 



The fanfare surrounding this signing, a reserve driver, announced on social media was equal to the publicity Doohan received as the #2 driver. 



Eyebrows were immediately raised. 



As many observers in F1 put it, this placed unnecessary pressure on a rookie driver in Doohan to deliver from the start. Yet after just six races, Doohan was unceremoniously dumped with Colapinto replacing him for what was said at the time would be a handful of races for Colapinto. 



Colapinto now has seven under his seatbelt in 2025 (will be eight after Hungaroring), failing to deliver a single point for his team in that period. Although his record of 0 points is equal to Doohan’s this season, Colapinto has not only had more races to prove that he is an upgrade, he also had the advantage of experiencing nine F1 races in 2024, plus more time in the test car before replacing Doohan. 



“He (Colapinto) is undoubtedly in an improved car to what Doohan raced, as the team is getting to grips with it as the season goes on,” said a Formula 1 mechanic. 



“A lot of people don’t know that Jack also had to put up with a change of engineers after just his second race. In Japan, in only his third race of the season, he had a new mechanic who had never race engineered in F1 before!



“They should back Jack. He was just getting better and better as time went on, which makes another mockery of Alpine to demote him as he’s proven that he has always come good.”



Whilst many opinions in F1 are subjective, the objective data points to Doohan as the quicker and more balanced driver through their years in F2 and F3. 



His record of multiple podium finishes in both F3 and subsequently in F2, including the imperative feature wins in F2, with three, made him the king of those races. For context, Colapinto won none.



Based on championship finishes, total race wins, and importantly feature race wins (which are the legitimate ones, not the reverse-grid lottery wins), how much they improved year-on-year and how they did in their last F2 season, it’s Doohan who is ahead of Colapinto. 







Doohan’s consistency across those seasons, alongside his loyalty as an Alpine junior, should be a clear demonstration to the Alpine decision makers that he would be the safe pair of hands to close out the season as the team’s #2 driver behind the ever-improving Gasly. 







Jack Doohan driving for Alpine 



Comparing Doohan’s and Colapinto’s qualifying times and races this season, by using the first six races they have competed in, demonstrates that Doohan is the better performing driver.  



In qualifying, Doohan’s average position was 15.5, with a best position of 11th in Bahrain, and he even outqualified the highly rated Gasly once, in Miami.



Colapinto’s average qualifying position is 16.7, a best qualifying performance of 12th in Canada, where he outqualified Gasly for the only time so far in a result that also became 10th on the grid, but only after penalties given to other drivers..



When it comes to pace, Doohan is clearly faster. In qualifying, the Australian’s average gap to Gasly in his six races was 0.287 seconds, compared to Colapinto’s first six races for Alpine, Colapinto’s average gap to his teammate was 0.302 seconds. Doohan finished ahead of Gasly in two of his 10 qualifying sessions (Miami and the China Sprint) compared to Colapinto only out qualifying Gasly on one occasion. 



In the races, after Colapinto took Doohan’s seat after Miami, the Argentine’s highest finish was 13th, which was also Doohan’s best result, in China. 



This weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix is the last one before the mid-season break before the teams return for the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August. With Briatore seemingly the chief decision maker at Alpine now, who has made big and excellent decisions in the past on driver personnel (Michael Schumacher at Benetton and Fernando Alonso at Renault) where both delivered multiple world titles for Briatore, surely it’s time for him to make another decisive one and rotate Doohan back in. 



Briatore himself set the test for Colapinto: “Franco must not crash – and he has to deliver results. This is not a gift. He has to perform. He needs to be fast, not crash, and score points. I’m only asking him these three things.” Unfortunately for Colapinto, none of the three have materialised. 



Whereas Alpine stated in a Press Release in May of Doohan: ‘The team continues to back Doohan as a key part of its long-term programme.’ 



It will be interesting to see if Alpine’s long term goals begin after Hungaroring. 
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