As Alpine chief Flavio Briatore demonstrated in 2025, Red Bull isn't the only organisation in Formula 1 capable of making brutal driver decisions. Rookie Jack Doohan was still getting started when a brace of incidents was enough for him to face the axe, with a high-speed Suzuka crash the most high-profile mistake that saw the Australian demoted to a reserve role after round six in Miami.
It meant we never got to see Doohan's ultimate potential, as despite his crashes it did feel like he was starting to get the hang of the difficult Alpine A525 and get closer to team-mate Pierre Gasly on one-lap pace. At the conclusion of the season, Doohan is still on the outside looking in, expecting to head to Super Formula in 2026 after conducting testing in Suzuka.
The truths is that barring spectacular rookie form, Doohan's place on the grid had already been undermined by the off-season signing of former Williams man Franco Colapinto.
Colapinto was initially brought on as part of a suite of reserve drivers, and the affable Argentinian was able to bring significant backing from South American sponsors. That is no slight against Colapinto's driving qualities, but with all else being equal it's also not hard to see why Doohan was on a shorter leash than Colapinto has been since his promotion.
Stepping into a new car mid-season was not necessarily a great birthday gift for Colapinto, who turned 22 in May, and certainly not when the car in question is the recalcitrant Alpine A525. While highly experienced Gasly was similarly struggling to get a tune out of the car, Colapinto had a much smaller body of work to fall back on as he tried to cope with the different driving style that Enstone's car required compared with what he was used to at Williams.
Despite a public admonishment from Briatore mid-season, Colapinto did just about enough to keep his seat until the end of the year and managed to get closer to Gasly on pace to extend that stay for 2026.
Colapinto finished the season being comprehensively outqualified by Gasly at 17-5 and with zero points to his name, with the latter being understandable given Alpine was the first team to stop developing its 2025 car and put all its focus on 2026.
"It's disappointing," Colapinto summed up his toothless 2025 Alpine campaign. "It's sometimes tricky to keep the motivation, but I'm quite happy that the team kept pushing all the way until the end. We tried our best, but we just didn't really have the pace.
“Towards the end it was worse because everyone kept bringing some upgrades and we couldn't really work the car anymore. But next year next year should be a much better one and I'm excited for that one."
As Alpine aims to become a competitive midfield force with Mercedes customer power units, its second seat may well increase in value over the next 12 months. Colapinto will have to progress with the team to make it his own in the long term. And rather quickly, too, before the unpredictable Briatore changes his mind once more.
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