Many questions surround the future of Alpine’s Formula One team before it undergoes a significant change in 2026.
After becoming a works manufacturer team again in 2016, the Renault-owned squad is closing its F1 engine program and taking on Mercedes power from 2026. That is also the start of a new era in car design regulations, giving teams a blank sheet from which to build.
As the grid awaits the 2026 season opener in Australia to determine the competitive pecking order, Alpine’s status as a customer team has some advantages. These include freeing up money that can be spent on other parts of the car, such as aerodynamic development.
Overall, it’s a new chapter of unknowns for Alpine next year.
But there will be some constants. Pierre Gasly penned a long-term extension, announced during the recent Italian Grand Prix weekend. This will tie him with Alpine until the end of the 2028 season.
But who will fill the team’s second seat is yet to be announced. Alpine already became a spectacle of sorts in this area during the 2025 season, as it swapped Jack Doohan for Franco Colapinto after just six races and has been non-committal about the Argentine driver’s future for the remainder of the season.
It sounded as if it was a race-by-race basis for an extended period, something that has continued as the season has developed.
But Colapinto is expected to remain an Alpine race driver for the rest of the 2025 season, a team representative confirmed to The Athletic. Though, as standard for F1, it is a performance-based situation.
However, the identity of Gasly’s 2026 teammate remains undecided, as the team evaluates potential candidates for a competitive driver lineup.
As of the week before the Singapore Grand Prix, the team is considering only the following list of internal candidates, although it isn’t completely closing the door to external drivers as the market evolves. Alpine’s executive advisor, Flavio Briatore, wants to decide on 2026’s lineup in November.
Jack Doohan is unlikely to return to the seat he lost in 2025 (Hector Vivas / Getty Images)Jack Doohan
Doohan essentially put all of his eggs in Alpine’s basket for his shot at F1.
He’d been part of the Red Bull junior program from 2017 to 2021, before making a move to Alpine’s academy. This offered more F1 testing opportunities and a more straightforward path to a potential F1 seat (particularly after Oscar Piastri left the Enstone-based academy to join McLaren for 2023).
Doohan underwent a heavy testing program in 2024, after which Esteban Ocon joined Haas, having clashed with Gasly. The door was open for Doohan to accomplish his dream.
The Australian driver’s debut was actually at the 2024 Abu Dhabi GP, the season finale, as a result of Ocon standing down early. Doohan ran a clean first grand prix, finishing P15. But as he navigated the opening stages of the 2025 season, he failed to score points and retired in the Melbourne season opener and in the Miami Grand Prix.
This turned out to be his last race in 2025, as Alpine swapped Colapinto just three days later.
But there is one considerable detail to remember in Doohan’s case. Pressure was already mounting before the season began, as the 22-year-old swiftly faced questions about his future. This was due to Alpine signing Colapinto as a reserve driver in January, striking a deal to bring him over from Williams. This revived Colapinto’s F1 fledgling career, as Williams had no race seats for 2025 with Carlos Sainz coming aboard.
But it left Doohan racing under different conditions than most rookies encounter for their first F1 races.
Doohan has remained with the team after being demoted, becoming one of its reserve and test drivers again following the Miami GP. But considering this and Colapinto’s improved performances of late, it’s unlikely that Doohan will receive another call-up for 2026.
Franco Colapinto, Flavio Briatore and Pierre Gasly on the drivers parade prior to the Italian GP on September 7 (Joe Portlock / Getty Images)Franco Colapinto
Many wondered whether Colapinto would end up in an Alpine race seat when the team announced his signing (and on a multi-year deal) in January. After all, Colapinto had made an immediate impression when he replaced Logan Sargeant at Williams last year.
He was the first Argentine driver to race in F1 for 23 years and scored points in two of his first four races. This sparked interest from other teams over a potential switch for 2026, but a series of late-season crashes were costly and initially left him without a 2025 race seat.
But the move to Alpine made sense for both parties. Briatore highly rated the young driver’s ability and saw considerable commercial value in Colapinto’s sponsors.
But he initially didn’t quite live up to the same hype that surrounded him last season and has yet to score a point for Alpine. After 11 races alongside Gasly, the Frenchman still leads Colapinto in their qualifying head-to-head, eight to four.
Considering this poor return (scoring points was a key target in demoting Doohan for Colapinto), Briatore acknowledged during the Dutch GP weekend that Alpine may have unnecessarily burdened its young Argentine driver.
“Last year, he had two or three races with (Williams), where he did very well,” Briatore said. “But maybe to be in the team with a good driver like Pierre, and always in competition with that teammate, maybe we put too much pressure on him.
“The driver is a human being, and we need to understand what’s going on in the heads of these kids. These are young kids – 19, 20, 22, 23 years old – and I think it’s our mistake to underestimate the human part of the driver. We’re always looking at the timing. Maybe I missed something in the management of the driver, Colapinto.”
Out of the three internal candidates, Colapinto seems like the more likely choice for next year at this time, but he needs to avoid costly crashes, stay close to Gasly in terms of pace, and show signs of improving.
The other big factors in analyzing his performance are that he didn’t have the winter to train and prepare like the rest of the grid, instead jumping straight into the car at Imola, and that Alpine doesn’t have a competitive car this season. It’s last in the championship and, according to an analysis of lap times, it is on average 0.367 seconds slower than the tenth-place car across all races.
After Azerbaijan, Alpine even posted bleakly on its X account, “With our current package, we know the last few races will be tough.”
Paul Aron practiced for Alpine at the Italian GP in September (Clive Rose / Getty Images)Paul Aron
Paul Aron, 21, is an option you cannot rule out, one that Briatore appears to rate highly. He recently told The Race that the seat is down to Aron or Colapinto.
The Estonian comes from a racing family and began his journey at the age of seven, karting in his home country. He won the 2018 CIK-FIA Karting European Championship, and Mercedes signed him to its junior program in July 2019, a few months after he made his single-seater debut in Formula Four.
Aron then competed in a variety of junior championships, including the Formula Regional European Championship in 2021 and 2022, before advancing to Formula Three in 2023. Aron finished third that year with a single win and four podium finishes, and he advanced to Formula Two last season.
He finished third there as well, with one win, four pole positions and eight podium finishes. Then, in late 2024, Alpine announced he was joining the team as a test and reserve driver.
The first time he hopped into an F1 car was during the post-season test in Abu Dhabi last year, and he’s since made three 2025 FP1 appearances, two of which were while he was on loan to Sauber.
The Estonian driver was half a second off Gasly’s pace during FP1 in Monza, when Aron drove Colapinto’s car. However, the performance comes with the caveat that drivers sometimes employ different run plans and use different tires.
More FP1 outings are in Aron’s future, and he is testing with Alpine, which provides valuable data points for the team to analyze when considering options for 2026. Colapinto and Aron are expected to do some practice sessions together, providing another helpful comparison. There is early optimism surrounding Aron, and given his performance in tests and practice sessions, as well as his interactions with the engineers, there’s a reason why he’s part of this conversation for 2026.
Top photo: Rudy Carezzevoli / Getty Images