Franco Colapinto moves on from incidents that marked his 2024 F1 season and puts pressure on Jack Doohan. Franco Colapinto moves on from the incidents that marked his 2024 F1 season.

Franco Colapinto pushes for a seat at Alpine
Franco Colapinto does not yet officially have an F1 seat for the 2025 season, but his presence as a third driver is already making an economic impact on Alpine’s finances. The logos of his sponsor Mercado Libre, an Argentine e-commerce site operating across Latin America, have appeared on the bargeboards (the deflectors behind the front wheels that channel airflow toward the floor and sidepods) of the A525, presented at the F1 75 Live event in London. This is the first sign of the financial backing behind the 21-year-old South American, who is putting significant pressure on the current race driver, Jack Doohan.

Flavio Briatore’s support
Rumors in the paddock spread quickly, suggesting that the young Australian rookie has a time-limited contract, with five or six races to prove himself to Flavio Briatore and secure his spot. However, it is Flavio Briatore himself who has taken a strong sporting interest in Franco Colapinto and pushed hard to secure his loan from Williams. The Argentine driver spoke to Spanish-language media, expressing his happiness about Flavio Briatore’s support: “I have a lot of trust in Flavio. He is the one who discovered Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso, two of my idols. So, of course, the fact that he saw me and said, ‘I want to support you, I want you in my team,’ is something that makes me very proud.”

“It is truly an honor that Flavio noticed me,” Franco Colapinto continued. “The fact that he saw me and placed his trust in me, believing that I can become a future world champion, as he said, is something very special. When I arrived, I knew there were no seats available for 2025, so I just wanted to prove what I could do. For some reason, people like Flavio, Alpine, and Red Bull were very interested in me at the time.” However, that interest waned somewhat due to the incidents Franco Colapinto was involved in at the end of the 2024 season, making his path to a full-time F1 career more difficult.

The 2024 crashes
“It was tough,” he added, “because I didn’t do any testing or practice days in an F1 car—I went straight into racing. If we look at how things usually go today, all the young drivers who start racing do thousands of kilometers of testing. Kimi Antonelli did 10,000 kilometers of testing, while I did 400. Naturally, I also made some mistakes, maybe pushing beyond 100% when I didn’t have a guaranteed seat. But I was racing knowing that every lap and every corner had to be at the maximum.

“My personality? I am who I want to be. Max Verstappen is also a driver who always speaks his mind. I entered Formula 1 after racing in F2, and I tried not to change.”