The changing fortunes of F1's drivers with a point to prove

Just 12 months ago, two-thirds of Formula 1's Oceanic contingent might have been forgiven for feeling sorry for themselves. 

Liam Lawson had his dream of a Red Bull drive swiped away after just two races, while Jack Doohan entered the European leg of the season on sidelines after losing his seat to Franco Colapinto with only seven grands prix in his pocket. 

Joining a team like Racing Bulls was certainly not an ignominious fate, but the circumstances in Lawson's 'demotion' were; the Kiwi was ported into the Red Bull line-up, and given an RB21 of which he seldom appeared to have control. That he was turfed out after the Melbourne and Shanghai rounds, having qualified 18th and last in his pair of races for the team, was a colossal blow.

The genesis of the switch had emerged during pre-season testing, where Red Bull already had reservations about Lawson's pace, as he was up to a second per lap down on Verstappen. Rather than chalk this up to a fundamental design philosophy that made Red Bull's lineage of cars incredibly difficult to manage if you weren't a certain four-time champion, Lawson was replaced with Yuki Tsunoda, who endured similar struggles through the year.

By May, Colapinto had done his first race for Alpine, reaching Q2 but only courtesy of hurling his pink-and-blue lump into a gravel trap. Those who felt Doohan was not given anywhere near enough time were immediately on Colapinto's case, using the Argentine's occasional predilection for shunts as a stick to beat him with. 

Both Lawson and Colapinto had a few points to prove in 2026, after perhaps feeling a smidgen lucky to be still in F1 this season. They've been given a second chance and, by golly, they've really taken it by the scruff of the neck.

The New Zealander's new zeal

Liam Lawson, Racing Bulls

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images

It took a few races for the green shoots of recovery to appear when it came to Lawson's 2025 endeavours. It was probably nice for him to outqualify Tsunoda at Suzuka, given the amount of public trash-talking that Tsunoda impishly indulged in, but he still had two tenths to uncover when it came to facing up against Isack Hadjar in the other VCARB. 

For much of the first half of the year, Lawson had been resigned to playing second-fiddle to the Frenchman, who made a splash on F1 with his searing qualifying pace. Yet, Lawson had his first intra-team win in Austria and outqualified all of his Red Bull stablemates for sixth, finishing there after a well-worked one-stopper and having soaked up ladles of pressure applied by Fernando Alonso. 

There were enough impressive moments to earn another crack, amazingly for what would be his first full season with the Italian squad: points in Belgium and Hungary, and third on the grid in a rain-affected Baku qualifying, which eventually led to fifth place – his current best in F1 thus far. 

While new team-mate Arvid Lindblad hoovered up the plaudits in the 2026 opener, after scoring points first time out in Australia, Lawson's afternoon had been undone by the starting issues that had been irksome for a handful of drivers across the Melbourne weekend. 

Still, he clinched seventh in both sprint and grand prix events in China, captured ninth in Japan, and then spent almost the entirety of the Montreal race keeping Pierre Gasly in his mirrors: there was to be no repeat of their Miami clash, prompted by Lawson's gearbox failure. It's been a quietly impressive start to the year, in Canada especially so when one considers that he lost the entirety of Saturday with a hydraulics issue.

Loquacious Colapinto does his talking on the track

Franco Colapinto, Alpine

Photo by: Andrej Ivanov / AFP via Getty Images

If there's one first impression of Colapinto, it's that the 23-year-old Argentine absolutely loves to chatter away; at his first FIA press conference session in Baku in 2024, he seemed absolutely beside himself that he could sit down and talk about his day in front of a new audience.

But he's also quick, a fact that had perhaps become forgotten over the past year during his difficult season with Alpine, given his tendency to perhaps overpush in crunch moments. This was arguably characteristic of his time at Williams; in his first races at Monza and Baku, he'd been given a car that was excellent at those sorts of tracks, and probably thought this F1 lark might be rather easy. Yet, at the more 'normal' circuits, the Williams was a much more difficult customer; Colapinto hit a brick wall trying to repeat the magic of Azerbaijan, in a literal and metaphorical sense.

Helmut Marko, then of Red Bull, is said to have considered making Williams an offer for Colapinto's services, but backed out when the Buenos Aires native started adding to the Grove squad's repair bills in late 2024. Flavio Briatore did, however, and yoinked Colapinto across Oxfordshire to take up a reserve role. It was very clear that Doohan had a job on his hands to keep his seat, and the Australian was being asked questions of his future before 2025 had even opened for business.

It was a learning season for Colapinto, albeit without the benefit of pre-season testing to fall back on. The Alpine was underdeveloped by design, although Gasly had been able to chisel out results with it on a handful of occasions. By comparison, Colapinto's record wasn't stellar by any metric, but to his credit he finished every single grand prix race that he started. That's not to say he didn't make mistakes; Imola had already been mentioned, and he crashed during qualifying at Silverstone, during a tyre test in Hungary, qualifying in Baku, and in the Sao Paulo sprint race. It all added up, and it occasionally felt that Colapinto's seat might be in doubt.

But he's not been making these errors so far this season. In the most recent two races in Miami and Montreal, he's been outpacing Gasly, who has had his own stellar moments in 2026. It helps that Alpine has produced its first genuinely competitive car in years, filling the void between the top four teams and those in the midfield, and Colapinto has found new confidence behind the wheel.

There was a near-miss moment in Montreal en route to finishing sixth, when he emerged from the pits and wiped his front wing against the outside wall at Turn 2. But it barely slowed him down – at least, once he realised the damage was certainly not terminal. Like Lawson, it was an impressive turnaround given that he missed most of Friday with a power unit issue.

Notes for improvement

Franco Colapinto, Alpine

Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images

While Lawson and Colapinto have both shown their worth as F1 drivers so far this season, there's still a couple of areas for them to work on. In Lawson's case, it's in delivering consistent qualifying pace; he can be hit or miss on a Saturday, and just as capable of putting his car into the top 10 as he is of falling out at the first hurdle.

The Kiwi needs to find that repeatability, and an approach that allows him to reduce the wild swings in variance in qualifying. His equipment is on average worthy of sitting at the top end of Q2, and this must be the minimum aim for every weekend.

In Colapinto's case, he needs a couple of extra tenths per lap in terms of race pace, particularly on the harder tyre. This was a frequent struggle through 2025 and, although he looked good on the hards in Montreal, it once again needs to become a regular part of his game. 

While he's outqualified Gasly in the previous two rounds, and the Frenchman suspects that there's an inherent issue with his car that is restricting one-lap performance, Colapinto is missing a smidgen of race pace by comparison. 

It's not been an easy ride for either driver in their formative F1 years but, if they can maintain their form through the rest of 2026, they're sitting pretty – and could even become coveted players in the 2027 driver market.