Alpine’s Flavio Briatore clarifies Franco Colapinto’s contract: “No fixed limit on races”. Flavio Briatore denies Alpine’s statement about Franco Colapinto racing only five Grands Prix.

For how long will Franco Colapinto race?
On May 7th, Alpine issued a press release officially announcing that Franco Colapinto would take Jack Doohan’s place, with a clear headline: “BWT Alpine Formula One Team announces that Franco Colapinto will join Pierre Gasly for the next five races.”
The “five GPs” phrase appeared five times in the release, even emphasized by Flavio Briatore: “After analyzing the early races of the season, we decided to field Franco alongside Pierre for the next five rounds.”

It was therefore rather unusual what happened on Friday at Imola, where Flavio Briatore himself denied in a Sky interview that Colapinto’s stint was limited: “Franco will do the races he needs to do. I read that he has five races, but no — there’s no limit to how many races he’ll do. He has to be fast, not crash, and score points. I only ask these three things of him, not ten. If he does them well, he’ll drive forever.”
Is it true, or just a way to ease pressure off the young Argentine driver?

The Oakes case
Flavio Briatore also returned to the matter of Oliver Oakes leaving his role as Alpine team principal after Miami: “His resignation came after Miami due to a personal issue. When it happened, I didn’t expect it either. But nothing changes, the structure has shifted a bit, but the rest is the same. This is a united team. It was said that I argued with Oliver, but that’s not true — we have a great relationship,” the Italian manager concluded.