Colapinto hits end of 'five-race' Alpine F1 deal - but has he been an improvement on Doohan?

Franco Colapinto enjoyed a solid weekend in Montreal. It wasn't by any means spectacular, yet it was the sort of weekend that was perhaps expected of him after being drafted into the Alpine line-up at Jack Doohan's expense. But one swallow a summer doth not make; nor does a 13th-place finish undo the previous anonymity that Colapinto displayed in his opening three races at Enstone.

The Argentine is on the cusp of his fifth race with Alpine; when it was first announced that Colapinto would replace Doohan in the line-up alongside Pierre Gasly, the press release made a note of an initial five-race deal for the ex-Williams driver. Executive advisor Flavio Briatore denied the existence of such a condensed timeframe, so his own comments in the aforementioned press release explicitly noting five races must come as some surprise.

Ever since Colapinto was sprung from Williams' reserve ranks and brought to Alpine, it was expected that he'd be in a race seat before the year was out. James Vowles even alluded to that when agreeing to release Colapinto, stating that the Bonaerense had a better opportunity of securing a drive at the Renault-owned team. It was an incredibly rough situation for Doohan to be placed in; that he made a point of shutting down any questions about Colapinto's efforts to claim the seat at the F1 75 event at London's O2 Arena can only be commended.

Doohan got just six races to prove his worth to Alpine, before Colapinto was rotated in. Whether his tenure in the car is up for scrutiny after those five races or not (and one suspects the latter, given Silverstone is just a week after Austria) remains to be seen, but we can at least compare their opening quartet of grands prix as a prelude to that fifth. As such, we can determine if Colapinto has been a genuine improvement in the second car; the points themselves don't necessarily demonstrate any greater improvement in fortunes for the second A525.

The caveat is that Doohan had a race at the end of 2024 and the Bahrain pre-season test to acquaint himself with the Alpine; Colapinto had some time in the simulator before being hurled back into the limelight for Imola. Still, we're comparing a short life-span with an even shorter one...

And, thanks to the whims of the calendar setters, Doohan was greeted with two sprint races in his six-race stint at the top of the season. Whether this was a help or a hindrance depends on your point of view; while the China and Miami rounds probably cost vital free practice time in a key learning stage of the season, particularly with the loss of FP2 sessions on Friday afternoons, the sprint races might have been seen as more valuable uses of time versus FP3.

Doohan's Japanese GP FP2 crash proved costly

Photo by: Bryn Lennon - Formula 1

Still, when comparing Gasly versus Doohan in qualifying pace terms, it's almost irrelevant; without sprint qualifying, the average gap between the two sits at 0.362 seconds based on qualifying sessions that both participated in - with the sprint-appropriate events, it's 0.367s.

But there's caveats to Doohan's gap; in Australia qualifying, he was actually faster than Gasly in Q1 and was denied a chance to go faster in Q2 owing to a yellow flag. Furthermore, his Miami SQ1 deficit to the Frenchman was over 0.8s, but Doohan went 1.7s quicker in 'proper' Q1 to find a 0.288s advantage over his more experienced team-mate.

Before Montreal, Colapinto's average gap stood at 0.392s - admittedly with a smaller sample size versus Doohan. He'd denied himself a chance to bring the delta down further with his Imola qualifying crash, and his car followed suit in Q1 at Barcelona with it stuck in neutral in the pitlane. By outqualifying Gasly in Canada by an impressive 0.433s in Q1 (as Gasly struggled for grip), the delta now sits at 0.186s between Gasly and Colapinto.

The difference in race pace between Doohan and Colapinto has been largely imperceptible across the races, at least so far; Gasly has generally had the upper hand, although the car has struggled to make anything other than occasional headway into the points

Thus, the qualifying gaps are more favourable to Colapinto, especially considered versus Doohan in his opening four races. Yet, interestingly when one considers the whole weekend, Colapinto is currently running to a deficit in the supertime ranking versus Doohan. The supertime is calculated as the ratio between the entity's best lap time and the overall best lap time, taking into consideration all sessions - practice, qualifying and race, expressed as a percentage. Gasly's benchmark is a 1.517% deficit to the 100% time; Doohan stands at a 1.639% deficit, while Colapinto is 2.468% adrift of the 100% time.

As a whole, Alpine has a 1.368% gap to the 100% time in the teams' order, putting it as the overall eighth-fastest team ahead of Haas and Sauber. This suggests that Doohan was closer to extracting the overall pace out of the car during the course of the weekend, but hasn't necessarily managed to capture the imagination in qualifying.

The difference in race pace between Doohan and Colapinto has been largely imperceptible across the races, at least so far; Gasly has generally had the upper hand, although the car has struggled to make anything other than occasional headway into the points. Thus, the slower driver is somewhat doomed to reside in the environs of midfield obscurity, occupied by responding to DRS trains and blue flags.

Gasly has provided the key performance marker when comparing Doohan vs Colapinto

Photo by: Mark Thompson / Getty Images

It's almost inconsequential at this stage whether Doohan or Colapinto has performed best. They're both drivers of the calibre that, if the car is good enough to score points regularly, they could be expected to slot into the lower reaches of the top 10 more often than not. In performance terms, they've generally been about the same; what Colapinto has going for him is a more ardent fanbase and a more eager clutch of backers willing to be associated with him.

"It's very tricky to compare what the performance should be when you have no testing, when everyone has been testing in Bahrain for I don't know how many days, everyone has had so much running and you're just getting used to a very tricky car to drive," Colapinto said in Montreal. "It's not an easy car to drive, so to get that amount of lap time out of the car is not easy.

"And it definitely took me a bit of time to understand what I had to do with my driving, what I had to change myself, what I need from the car to make me feel a bit more happy, and it generally took me a bit longer than what I expected.

"I think it almost feels now like I'm starting to find what I need, so that's always positive, but there is more to come; there is much more to work on the car and more work to do."

Whether Colapinto improves in the following races is down to whether Alpine elects to extend his tenure beyond the initial five grands prix stated in the original press release. It very much feels that the team is perhaps not seeking to make a further change; the idea of driver rotation being a way to let Doohan down gently and delay the 'fish or cut bait' decision.

As it stands, Doohan largely occupied an area on the F1 grid where he was largely expected to be; battling among the lower midfielders with a small gap to Gasly. Colapinto has, so far, floated around in similar circles - which arguably has been the more disappointing situation, given his explosive arrival in the championship last year. Perhaps it's down to references, where Colapinto drove for Williams with no previous F1 experience and thus could start afresh. Now, he's had to 'unlearn' the Williams set-up and cope with a very different chassis, plus different powertrain to match.

It would be unsurprising if Alpine decided against changing again for the rest of 2025 but, equally, it would not be entirely surprising if the team cast its net out elsewhere for 2026. After all, Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez remain on the market...

Can Colapinto keep hold of the Alpine spot long term?

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images