Alpine managing director Steve Nielsen believes Franco Colapinto needs time “for that talent to mature and deliver”, as the Argentine prepares to embark on his first full Formula 1 season in 2026.
Colapinto first experienced F1 when he replaced Logan Sargeant at Williams midway through the 2024 season and immediately showed strong pace. He reached Q3 and scored his first points in only his second race, in Azerbaijan, before following that up with an SQ3 appearance in Austin and another top-10 finish later that same weekend at the United States Grand Prix.
He was unable to replicate those results, however, after being promoted from reserve driver to race driver at Alpine in place of Jack Doohan from the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in May 2025, finishing the season without scoring a point.
But, that outcome came amid a deeply difficult campaign for Alpine, with the Enstone-based outfit ending the year last in the constructors’ championship on just 22 points.
Having renewed its faith in Colapinto for 2026, Alpine will now give the 22-year-old his first opportunity to contest a full campaign from the outset, complete with an entire pre-season. Nielsen therefore placed value on what the Argentine showed during the 2025 campaign as he outlined his expectations for the year ahead.
“Franco is a young driver. We’ve seen other young drivers go through good and difficult periods – he’s on that journey,” said Nielsen, when asked about Colapinto at the 2025 Abu Dhabi season finale.
“There were races earlier in the year when he was a match for Pierre, and on a couple of occasions maybe even faster than Pierre in the races. He’s on that journey, and we’ll give him all the support he needs to be as quick as he can be, whether that’s faster than Pierre or close to Pierre.
“The important thing for us is to have two drivers scoring in the championship. We’ve suffered a bit this year: only one car scored points, and not enough with that one either, while the other car scored zero points with two different drivers in it.
“We need stability in the second car, and we need to give time for that talent to mature and deliver points for us. You need two drivers.”
Alpine endured a particularly difficult latter part of the season, having halted development of the A525 early in the year to focus on the new 2026 regulations, while rivals continued introducing updates to their cars. This left both Pierre Gasly and Colapinto more often than not fighting towards the back of the field, with the team scoring points in just one race – Brazil – across the final 11 grands prix of the season.
“I think the brutal reality is that our car was not fast enough to score points,” Nielsen said, when pressed on Colapinto’s own performance.
“I think both drivers we have now are better than the car. On the few occasions when the car has been good enough to fight around the points, we had one in Brazil, where Pierre qualified reasonably well and raced reasonably well, and another in Vegas where we were okay.
“When the car is good, both drivers are more than capable of delivering what the car allows. We need to make a much better car, a much better car, and then we’ll see if the drivers are capable of going with it.”
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