The spins, crashes, lack of points and general downbeat tone, this was not what Franco Colapinto’s return to Formula 1 should have been.

Because, as he demonstrated for Williams in the second half of 2024, his flashy speed became worthy of the sport, and garnered a huge South American fanbase, particularly in his home country of Argentina.

But after he had to make way for the already-signed-up Carlos Sainz, he spent the first half a dozen races, of the 2025 season, on the side lines.

But when Jack Doohan was dropped, after the Miami Grand Prix, Colapinto was drafted in as his replacement.

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Where has it gone wrong for the Argentine?

On paper, things have not looked entirely convincing for the rookie, given the initial objectives that he was given by team supremo, Flavio Briatore.

After being initially called up on a five-race plan, which has been exceeded, he was tasked to ‘be fast, not crash and score points.’ But has he hit any of those?

Colapinto’s issue is that his handful of crashes have affected our understanding of his raw speed, because they have come in qualifying, which is where the drivers unleash theirs. 

He was only around three tenths off his experienced teammate, Pierre Gasly, when he crashed on his debut Alpine qualifying session, at Imola. But that deficit became more redundant as he wrecked the front of his car.

At Silverstone, he stepped over the limit through the final couple of corners of his Q1 push lap and needlessly crashed out of the session.

At that point of the session, he had registered a quicker time than his French teammate. But that very swiftly became forgotten as he forced his mechanics into a longer Saturday evening, by mending his car.

It also did not help his cause that Gasly eventually reached Q3, let alone Q2. And although it came as a surprise, the marked difference between the two drivers had simply been embellished by the Argentine’s frustrating error.

He also crashed heavily during the post Hungarian GP test, at Budapest, limiting the team’s data collection from the event. And that team does need every bit of data it needs as it scrambles to avoid being last in the championship.

Although the Argentine has not met the flimsy criteria set out by the notoriously ruthless Briatore, he is not the team’s main concern right now. Its problem is their car.

Gasly has scored 13 points while Colapinto has been in the second car, but it is still a tricky machine to tame and naturally regresses in competitiveness once the race is underway.

So, if the Argentine cannot underline his raw speed in qualifying, he is relying upon his nous and experience to bounce back in the race, but as a rookie he does not have an abundance of that.

Considering that Jack Doohan was quite brutally dropped in May, it would not be unreasonable to suggest that if the same expectations were set upon Colapinto, he would have lost his drive as well, because he is not performing much, if any, better than his predecessor.

But if team Enstone wanted to drop him, they would have done so during the summer break. Because in recruiting a new driver, they would need to get them up to speed with the car, and the past four weeks would have been the most ideal time for that.

And given that from now until the end of the season, there is only a maximum of a two-week gap between races, it would mean that Colapinto would have to catastrophically regress for him to be dropped in-season, or for Briatore to have a very sudden change of plan.

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