It couldn’t have been a worse start to the season. Lap one of the first race of the 2025 F1 world championship, and Jack Doohan’s Alpine F1 car lay in pieces after a fifth corner smash at his home race.
The rookie knew that he had needed the best possible performance to shut down doubts about his ability, but his mistake in wet conditions only fuelling the belief of some that Alpine should replace him with newly-signed reserve driver Franco Colapinto.
Seven weeks on and the doubters have won. Doohan has lost his race seat — for five grands prix at least. The announcement came hours after the resignation of team principal Oliver Oakes, who has been replaced by Alpine advisor Flavio Briatore.
It has been a torrid month-and-a-half for the 22-year-old. After Melbourne, things got worse in FP1 for the Japanese GP, when Doohan failed to close his DRS into the first corner, resulting in a huge crash. This followed a 16th-place finish (on the road before disqualifications) in China.
He was unlucky in Bahrain, losing out during a safety car period to finish 14th after having run in the points, but fell short in qualifying for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix which he ended 17th fastest, compared to ninth for team-mate Pierre Gasly. That pushed him into an adventurous strategy for Sunday which Doohan couldn’t make work and he ended the race as he had started it in 17th position.
Another Doohan crash in Japan
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There was an unfortunate parallel in Miami, where Doohan qualified and finished 17th in the sprint race, but his weekend took an upward turn in qualifying for the grand prix where he outpaced Gasly. Sadly for Doohan, a first corner clash with Liam Lawson ended his race and, for now, his racing career at Alpine.
After six races in 2025, Doohan remains without a single point, compared with Gasly’s seven, and qualified on average 0.367sec behind his team-mate. That might be unsurprising for a rookie, but Doohan can’t say that he wasn’t warned.
“The only thing we can be sure of is death!” the team’s executive advisor Flavio Briatore ominously told Le Parisien on the subject of his new driver in pre-season. “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.”
However, even if Doohan had blazed a trail to the points in his first races, it’s doubtful whether those results would have changed the outcome.
The departure of Oakes, the evening before the driver announcement, bolstered the impression that Briatore has been pulling the strings for some time — in favour of Colapinto.
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Flavio Briatore
It was Briatore who brought Colapinto in as the team’s reserve driver, giving Alpine a depth of resource that would cover it for anything up to an F1 apocalypse, but also suggesting that promises of a greater role had been made.
After all, it would have been a bold decision for Colapinto to move from a reserve role at up-and-coming Williams to the same position at a dysfunctional Alpine team, without some guarantee of a race seat.
Briatore’s pre-season comments then piled pressure on Doohan, making it clear that Colapinto could replace him at any moment. And in his statement announcing the driver change, the new Alpine team principal suggested that the post-Miami swap had always been on the cards. “Having a complete and fair assessment of the drivers this season is the right thing to do in order to maximise our ambitions next year,” he said. “The next five races will give us an opportunity to try something different and after this time period we will assess our options.”
There were other signs too that Doohan’s grasp on the Alpine race seat was weak.
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After the lap one crash in Australia, Oakes admitted the team might have put undue pressure on Doohan by signing Colapinto.
“I feel for him, because at the end of the day, probably all that noise was brought on from what we did,” the then-Alpine principal said. “By the same token, if you’re good and you can handle it, you deserve to be in F1. You are one of 20 drivers here, and you have to perform no matter what’s thrown at you.”
The fact that Alpine – particularly Oakes – kept trying to frame the situation as the media speculating on a nothing-situation rather than a PR storm brought upon itself suggested nervousness.
Both he, Briatore and Doohan himself were questioned by Motor Sport and other media on the situation prior to this year’s first race when Colapinto vs Doohan was already the hot topic.
“I’m not pushing for Colapinto,” protested Briatore. “Now we have three reserve drivers [who are] — especially Colapinto — very, very quick.
“Jack, for the moment, has done very good in the test, and Gasly has done a super job last year.
Briatore says he’s focused on doing the best by Enstone
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“Let’s start the season, and after we see what kind of possibility. If it’s not this year, it’s next year but sure, we’re looking for – everybody is looking for – ‘the talent’, because with the talent it’s easy to win the championship.
“You had the talent with Schumacher. We won the championship. We had the talent in Fernando. We won the championship. These guys make the difference. Now, within three-tenths you have five cars.
“I’ve made changes before, because of people not performing. We have the responsibility of 1000 staff, 1000 people working in the factory, and we need to respect these people working very hard. I expect the best from everybody, everybody working together to winning a race.”
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As well as a driver squeezing the most – and even more – from a car, Briatore was referring to the star factor of drivers like Schumacher and Alonso who can haul a team along and make it greater than the sum of its parts.
While Colapinto was doing a decent job rather than a spectacular one in F2, his charisma and engaging personality once in grand prix racing made him an attractive prospect for teams — not to mention his South American sponsorship and the fans that come with him. That’s a lot of people to sell Alpine baseball hats to.
At the launch event the Argentinian notably thanked the significant number of journalists who had made the trip all the way from their homeland to see a car that in theory he might not even be driving this year.
Team boss Oakes departed just ahead of the driver change announcement
The current outcome looks to be the fulfilment of a masterplan by Briatore, who is renowned for seeing the full picture: he immediately got back to his deal-making-best upon his 2024 return by controversially cutting off the Alpine team’s relationship with Renault’s Viry engine plant — which has been on the F1 grid in one form or another for 50 years — in favour of Mercedes, and moved on Esteban Ocon, the last driver to win for the team, before the end of last year.
He’s billed Colapinto’s promotion as an assessment period of five races, after which Alpine’s driver line-up will once again be re-evaluated, although few would doubt that he has a clear view of how the season will unfold.
He’s not afraid to make the big decisions: “In the end my responsibility is always to provide to the team [with] the best drivers possible. If you were doing my job, you’d do the same – you try to have the best one.”
