30/08/2025
NEWS STORY
Alpine boss, Flavio Briatore admits that promoting Franco Colapinto was a mistake.
Drafted in by Williams to replace Logan Sargeant last year, the Argentine made an immediate impression. However, as the season continued he began making mistakes, and by the end of the year was costing the Grove outfit a small fortune in terms of the cars he had damaged.
This year, as reserve driver for Alpine, Colapinto was promoted when Jack Doohan was dropped following the Miami Grand Prix.
However, this time there was no impressive 'debut', instead he has regularly under-performed and has continued crashing, even during a recent tyre test for Pirelli.
Speaking at Zandvoort, Flavio Briatore admits that he was wrong to promote the Argentine driver.
"We changed Doohan with Franco and maybe he has the same problem of too much pressure to be in Formula 1," said the Italian. "Maybe we put too much pressure on him," he continued. "We need to consider sometimes that the driver is a human being and we need to sometimes understand exactly what's going on in the head of these, because they are young; 19, 20, 22, 23.
"It's our mistake sometimes to underestimate the human part of the driver," he admitted. "We're looking always for the timing. Maybe I missed something there in the management of the driver.
"I think for a driver it's very difficult to cope with this car," he admitted. "Maybe it was not the right timing to have Franco in Formula 1, maybe he needed another year to be part of Formula 1.
"I'm not happy, if you look at the results, that's what is important. He tried very hard. We tried very hard with the engineering team to please him in everything, but really it's not what I expect from Colapinto."
Sitting alongside the Italian, Colapinto's former boss at Williams, James Vowels, defended the youngster.
"When the pressure is not there you're able to get a lot more out of the driver, because they're not concerned about an immediate performance having an impact," he said.
"A good example was Franco's first time I put him in at Silverstone," he continued. "He thought it was his only chance to ever get there and my message to him beforehand was: 'It has nothing to do with lap times, it is about you relaxing and enjoying the moment because this may never come back to you again'. And he did a stellar performance.
"The second thing is that three tenths now separate the grid, so when you make a small mistake - and a small mistake is a tenth - you're last. That's a different world to where we were before, where frankly you could be a tenth off your team-mate and no one would know about it."
As far as his other driver is concerned, Briatore is happy.
"He's good," he smiled. "He's consistent. He's a team player. I know him very well. We need some base in the team, and Pierre is a base in the team for the future."
Check out our Saturday gallery from Zandvoort here.