Colapinto's Alpine shot is a dangerous opportunity for him
Another chance to make a play for a full-time F1 seat, but it could be detrimental or even 'dangerous' for his chances. Edd Straw assesses Franco Colapinto's return racing with Alpine
Franco Colapinto has been here before. The 21-year-old steps into an unfamiliar Formula 1 car with the season in full swing and the guarantee only of a short run in which to make his mark for Alpine at Imola this weekend.
Once again, his challenge is to turn an initially limited opportunity into a longer run in F1, as he tried to after replacing Logan Sargeant for the last nine races last year.
Setting aside the ridiculous treatment of Jack Doohan, axed after just seven outings, there’s no question Colapinto merited another shot at F1.
Given what he did for Williams last year, it’s far from ideal that it’s not a full-season appointment as he’s shown qualities that could help to make for a long F1 career.
Fortunately, he’s no stranger to jumping into a car in sub-optimal circumstances and making it work for him on his unlikely climb to F1.
In some ways, this is a better opportunity for Colapinto than his Williams outings.
There was never any chance of staying on as a race driver there given the impending arrival of Carlos Sainz, so his task there was to make a big enough impact to be in the hunt for other seats. He achieved that, even being considered as an option by Red Bull/Racing Bulls, but ultimately it only led to a reserve role with Alpine.
While it was always widely expected he’d take the Alpine race drive, it was clear that his appeal was as much, if not more so, down to the promise of vast sums of sponsorship as his ability and what he'd shown at Williams.
It's unfair in many ways that he’s been cast as a cash cow. Even when at Williams, one of the aims of the team became to sell him to the highest bidder given there was little realistic chance of using him again as a race driver until 2027.
Likewise, interest from rivals was always with a view to the tens of millions of imaginary dollars he would bring. That does him a disservice as Colapinto showed he can be far more than that in F1.
Colapinto has had reasonable preparation for this outing, albeit without the benefit of having driven the Alpine A525 in anything other than the digital domain.
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That’s the main difference compared to his Williams chance, given he had driven the 2024 car in reality at Silverstone in practice.
He’s also had TPC (testing of previous cars) running and become embedded with the team, which includes conducting race-weekend support simulator work. Inevitably, there’s plenty of talk about his pace in those TPC tests, with mutterings that another Alpine reserve, Paul Aron, has been quicker, but it’s what Colapinto does on race weekends in the public eye that matters.
So what did we learn about Colapinto during his seven races with Williams? He’s certainly not overawed by F1; if anything, he’s been criticised for arrogance. But if that’s to be a disqualifying characteristic for an F1 driver, the current grid would look very different.
What Colapinto showed was his capacity to jump in a car and drive with confidence. That shone through on his second outing in Baku, when he hit the wall in free practice but didn’t miss a beat thereafter.
Those early outings turned him from a driver nobody was talking about as a 2025 race driver into one who was seen as a realistic option, with eighth in Azerbaijan and 10th in the United States in his second and fourth outings key markers of his potential.
The downside is that the final part of the year was patchier. There were two crashes in Brazil, one under the safety car in the race, albeit with the caveat he was inexperienced in the wet and put in a position where he had to push on to catch the pack after a pitstop.
With Williams struggling for parts, the low point was his qualifying crash in Las Vegas after he failed to adjust. As Colapinto says of that incident, “the risk management was not right”.
As for his pace, it caught the eye. 
That said, the comparison with Albon was distorted by circumstances and parts shortages and, in terms of raw pace, he was probably giving away a couple of tenths to his team-mate. But in the circumstances, that was impressive.
The same should apply if that’s the initial gap to Pierre Gasly, although it seems Alpine wants more, and quickly. Colapinto’s certainly a quick driver, but yet to prove definitively how fast he is at this level.
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But with little opportunity to play himself in, Colapinto will lean on his ever-present confidence to jump in the car and wring its neck from the outset. That’s probably the best approach he can take.
However, what he can’t afford is a series of accidents, with not only Doohan waiting on the bench, keen to return, but also Aron (below) lurking and Alpine only confirming Colapinto for the next five races. 
Colapinto must turn this opportunity into a full-time race drive for 2026. And, given he has shown an occasional tendency to put his foot in it in interviews, it’s also essential he does his talking on the track.
Realistically, he had already done enough to merit that full-time opportunity somewhere in F1.
That’s what makes this Alpine stint a dangerous opportunity, one that he could parlay either into a long-term F1 future or, if it doesn’t go well quickly, something far bleaker.
