Franco Colapinto has opened up about Alpine’s chronic uncompetitiveness, his on-track improvement in recent weekends, controversy over team orders in Austin, simulator work, and future prospects as they gear up for the last few races of the 2025 F1 season.
Following his official debut for Alpine at the Imola GP, the first half of Colapinto’s campaign was rather lacklustre. While he failed to finish inside the top ten even once, his teammate Pierre Gasly scored 12 crucial points, besides the 7 from the first six rounds of the season.
Along with a couple of crashes he had already suffered in qualifying, Colapinto experienced a massive shunt on the second day of Pirelli’s 2026 tyre test. With the Argentinian driver seemingly holding onto his seat on a race-by-race basis, the pressure to deliver only intensified.
Although he still sits twentieth in the standings with zero points to his name, Colapinto appears to have found his feet in the latter half of the 2025 F1 season. He has outqualified his experienced teammate four times and also made it to the second segment of qualifying in Budapest and Austin. Moreover, the 22-year-old has finished ahead of Gasly in half of the races since the Dutch GP, where he narrowly missed out on P10.
Colapinto’s difficult first season so far at Alpine can be partially attributed to the tricky A525 that has made both drivers’ race weekends significantly challenging at times. Trailing behind Sauber by 40 points, the French team now languishes in last place in the Constructors’ Championship.
Alpine’s pace deficit has made transition year trickier
Speaking in a print media session ahead of the Mexico City GP, Franco Colapinto corroborated that Alpine have deemed 2025 a transitional year with new regulations coming into effect and their switch to Mercedes power units in 2026. At the same time, he acknowledged that their struggles during the ongoing F1 season have been more profound than they had initially anticipated.
Touching on his noticeable improvement in the last six races, Colapinto also noted that Alpine lacking two to three tenths in comparison to their immediate rivals has made it rather difficult to showcase the progress he has made personally with regard to overall pace.
“Yeah I think it’s tricky the situation the team is in. Of course we knew that 2025 was going to be a transition year but it’s been a bit trickier than what we were expecting and the reality is that we are very close to each other all the time.
“These last six races personally I’ve been finding pace and I’ve been quite strong but it’s also true that we cannot show any real personal pace sometimes because at the end of the day we are a bit too far.
“Those two to three tenths that we lack to compete with the others are punishing for us and I think that makes it trickier.”
Colapinto backtracks after disobeying team orders
Franco Colapinto ignored the team orders Alpine had issued to stay behind Gasly during the 2025 United States GP. The Argentinian driver was lapping in 18th place when he closed in on the Frenchman’s A525 ahead of him.
Despite being on five-lap fresher tyres than Gasly, and with Gabriel Bortoleto chasing, Alpine instructed Colapinto to remain behind the one-time F1 race winner and hold position.
However, Colapinto took matters into his own hands and dived to the inside at Turn 1 on the penultimate lap. As a result, he finished in 17th place, while Gasly dropped behind Bortoleto and finished as the last runner.
Alpine’s Managing Director Steve Nielsen was particularly disappointed with Colapinto’s defiance and stated that they would conduct a review and deal with the matter internally.
Even though Colapinto had staunchly defended his actions after the race in Austin, he softened his tone in Thursday’s media session before the F1 Mexico City GP. While the 22-year-old remarked that the urge to beat one’s teammate is natural, he admitted that a driver should always comply with team orders.
“Yeah, I fully agree and team instruction should always be obeyed. But the situations are tricky and I think as a driver it was natural for me at the moment to compete and we went through it with the team.”
Alpine making a decision would help Colapinto race in a relaxed manner
In terms of his better run of form in the recent rounds and whether he is in a better place now regarding his future prospects, the Argentinian driver responded that he’s not the one making the decisions.
Refusing to divulge too much information, Franco Colapinto only added that he hopes for Alpine to convey their decision before the stress over his uncertain F1 career starts to impact his performance.
“I think only time will tell; I don’t know to be honest. I’m not the one making decisions. I’m not the one having so much of the conversations and to be honest I don’t want to go too much into detail.
“Hopefully it arrives to a point that I can race with not so much stress and a bit more relaxed.”
More technical work outside of the car in 2025 in comparison to before
With regard to managing the difficult A525 during his tough first season at Alpine and whether that places more emphasis on the technical work he’s doing outside of the F1 car, Franco Colapinto concurred with the assessment.
The Buenos Aires native explained that the additional hours are required to find appropriate solutions by trial and error as he strives for better drivability and consistency.
“I’m doing a lot of work outside of the car and I think so far in my career it’s the year I’ve done the most.
“Of course it’s something that we also need but I’m just trying to understand better what I need from the car, what direction, what compromise we are making in the set-up and all those things are constantly a kind of a try and it kind of works one day and another day it doesn’t work.
“It’s tricky. This car is difficult to drive and the compromises we make I try to find an easier car to drive and a more consistent one.”
Lack of experience and its impact on set-up directions
Furthermore, Franco Colapinto elaborated on the challenges of choosing set-up directions and how the relative lack of experience has compounded his problems with regard to the precarious A525 and its handling on the track.
Stating that he has started to get on top of his set-up struggles at Alpine recently, Colapinto also emphasised that the limited running during the F1 Sprint weekends makes it harder for drivers to find the optimal balance for their respective cars.
“And I ended up with the opposite and not really helping in the direction I wanted. It’s tricky when you don’t know the car and what each thing of the set-up is doing. Of course not having the experience of many years around this car is what affects me but I think it’s still a learning process.
“I’ve been getting better lately but of course Sprint weekends are always trickier on that side. Having a single FP and not much time to try is more difficult.”
