Franco Colapinto’s future with the Alpine F1 team appears to be in doubt following fierce criticism from Flavio Briatore.<\/p>\n
Colapinto was drafted in to replace Jack Doohan after the Miami Grand Prix, having joined from Williams as a reserve driver at the start of the year, but thus far, the Argentine has struggled alongside Pierre Gasly.<\/p>\n
He has failed to match the three tests Briatore set for him in driving fast, scoring points and not crashing, with a best finish of 13th in Monaco and Canada.<\/p>\n
Under F1 rules, Alpine is allowed to make one more driver change in 2025, with each team permitted four drivers per season, with Briatore firmly declaring that Colapinto’s performances were “not what I expected.”<\/p>\n
“I’ve seen everything already, so I don’t think I need to see anything more,” Briatore told media, including RacingNews365.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I think for this driver, it is very difficult to cope with this car as they are very, very heavy and very, very quick for a young driver in Formula 1.<\/p>\n
“Maybe it was not the [right] timing to have Franco in Formula 1, and maybe he needs another year to be part of F1.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’m not happy with the result; this is what is important, and he tries very hard, we try very hard with the engineering [team], but it is not what I expected from Colapinto.”<\/p>\n
The article continues below.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tBriatore doubtful about Colapinto<\/p>\n
When then asked if there would be another driver swap mid-season, Briatore appeared to show mercy for his struggles, but raised doubts about Colapinto’s future with the team.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We changed Doohan with Colapinto, and maybe Colapinto had the same problem – too much pressure to be in F1,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Last year, he had two or three good races, but maybe to be in the team with a good driver like Pierre, and always to be in competition with him, maybe we put too much pressure on him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I think we need to consider that the driver is a human being, and we need time to understand exactly what is going on in the head of these kids, because they are young kids.<\/p>\n
“[They are] 19-23, and I think one of our mistakes is underestimating the human part of the driver.<\/p>\n
“We are always looking for the timing, and maybe I missed something in the management of Colapinto, but as for the future, honestly, I don’t know.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Franco Colapinto’s future with the Alpine F1 team appears to be in doubt following fierce criticism from Flavio…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104675,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-104674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}