As Franco Colapinto has impressed the Formula 1 paddock at Williams as a mid-season replacement for Logan Sargeant, there has been plenty of calls to keep him on the grid for 2025.
But with no room at the Grove-based squad, as Carlos Sainz comes in alongside Alex Albon, the team has been aiming to help the Argentine find a spot elsewhere.
Over recent weeks speculation linking him to Red Bull has grown stronger, as pressure continues to mount on Sergio Perez while the team’s junior programme remains disjointed.
So, would Colapinto to Red Bull actually work? Our writers provide their takes.
Why Colapinto partnering Verstappen isn’t as crazy as it sounds – Alex Kalinauckas
What a journey Franco Colapinto has been on in not even three months of Formula 1. From relative obscurity in Formula 2, to being a candidate to partner Max Verstappen at Red Bull in 2025. Such a bold move would be typical Red Bull driver crowbarring, but it’s not quite as out there as it might seem.
First off, there has been genuine consideration within the Red Bull camp for such a move. It is understood to be something team principal Christian Horner is pushing rather than coming from Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko, who understandably wants Liam Lawson promoted to benefit the Red Bull Junior Team.
But that previously well-oiled machine is now jammed to the extent it’s clearly broken. Adding Colapinto in at the top would allow time for it to be repaired, with Lawson still given a chance to shine in F1 anyway.
A bigger problem for Red Bull to overcome in any move for Colapinto – at either of its squads – is Williams’s asking price. Rumours have this at $20 million, with Red Bull uninterested in a loan deal for the Argentine.
But, if a deal can be struck, the upsides are considerable for Red Bull.
It is already facing a $20m hit to its prize money for 2024 – given it's on-track to finish third in the constructors’ championship this year thanks to Sergio Perez failing to get anywhere near close enough to Verstappen, rather than winning as it did in 2022 and 2023. Colapinto also brings sponsors, as Williams is currently enjoying, and massive interest from Latin America.
At the Mexican GP, this writer saw reporters from media outlets in that market arranged several ranks deep every time Colapinto spoke. Plus, interested parties in his home country are already expressing interest in reviving the Argentine Grand Prix. So far, however, it is understood this hasn’t got as far as a formal enquiry being made to Formula One Management about a possible calendar slot…
While neither Lawson or Colapinto have historical baggage with Verstappen that might risk upsetting the Dutchman and his camp at Red Bull, there is little to separate them on pure speed either. In terms of their gaps to their current team-mates, Albon is on average 0.179s quicker than Colapinto in qualifying (based on dry sessions only, capped at the point either driver exited) and Yuki Tsunoda is just 0.034s ahead of Lawson by the same metric.
And neither is a certain to be any upgrade on Perez. But this is where driver mental resilience comes in to the consideration currently happening. This is the reason Red Bull won't promote Tsunoda from RB – it doesn’t think he’ll be able to handle the demands of being team-mate to a true F1 great.
In his six grand prix weekends so far, Colapinto has proved he can cut it with much less prep, even compared to Lawson. He’s gone from shaking slightly facing the media at Monza to a somewhat swaggering paddock presence, which isn’t meant negatively. Crashes such as those he had in Brazil – including an awkward one behind the safety car – can’t continue, however.
Yes, the pressure is off to a certain extent given technically all the seats for 2025 are already gone, but he’s still handling the F1 pressure cooker remarkably well.
This is key for Red Bull. All it needs is a team-mate to get closer to Verstappen – say, with such an average gap as Colapinto has to Albon – and be able to handle the burden of being pushed relentlessly hard from across the garage and, potentially, beaten all the time.
Based on what he’s shown so far, Colapinto could well be the answer to a problem Red Bull has struggled to solve ever since Daniel Ricciardo walked out back in 2018.
Ignoring the hype, Colapinto isn’t ready for Red Bull… yet – Oleg Karpov
Hype is a funny thing. It's great because it can open a lot of doors. But when it's gone, they tend to close just as quickly.
There's definitely a lot of hype around Franco Colapinto right now, and the very fact that Red Bull's team boss is even considering the Argentine for 2025 says a lot about the shock waves he's sent through the paddock since his sudden and unexpected arrival on the Formula 1 grid at Monza.
Because it's not just Colapinto who's arrived in F1, it's the whole country with him in the form of stickers on Williams cars, an avalanche of Argentine fans invading Sao Paulo and Williams' social media channels, and Argentine politicians suddenly talking about F1. Politicians wouldn't be politicians if they didn't try to jump on the hype bandwagon, would they?
This constant noise around Colapinto is great for everyone. Williams, F1 itself - and it can still do a lot of good for any team that signs him up for 2025.
But if Franco does join Red Bull, it will be him sharing the garage with Max Verstappen, not the fans and politicians (although stickers may follow), and there's simply no evidence yet that he's ready for one of the toughest jobs in F1. It's not even that it's too early for Colapinto to jump into one of the best cars on the grid, although that's probably a valid argument too - there's just not enough factual data to prove he's up to the task.
From what we've seen of Colapinto so far, it's safe to say that he's a better match for Alex Albon than Logan Sargeant. It should also be taken into account that Williams also improved in the second half of the championship, but making it to Q3 and scoring his first points in Baku was definitely impressive. Being ahead of Albon in qualifying also added to the overall excitement, but there's also the hard fact that Albon didn't actually get to do his final lap due to the team's mistake.
The weekend in Singapore was also decent, and scoring points in Austin is definitely worth highlighting. But does that mean he's ready for a top car? Of course not. It's probably enough to say that he's proven that he's good enough to be in F1. But that's about it. At least for now.
The circumstances of his debut, jumping into the car mid-season, make for a better overall impression although he's not the first rookie in F1 to have done well when thrown into the sea to swim recently, and we should probably stop being so surprised at how the new generation of drivers cope with such challenges.
Nowadays, it's usually time that tells you more. There was a lot of hype around Yuki Tsunoda after his first race in Bahrain, and Nyck de Vries' spectacular performance at Monza in 2022 earned him praise for the next few months, before the hype train stopped and went into reverse after just a handful of races in 2023.
Colapinto still has a lot to prove. Qualifying margins against Albon in Italy and Mexico are less talked about now. So are crashes. But that's the nature of today's media landscape, where Sargeant would have been eaten alive for crashing under the safety car and yet for Colapinto, who is in his honeymoon phase in F1, there are still excuses.
The fact that Horner is even considering hiring Colapinto probably says more about the extent of Red Bull's driver problem than it does about Colapinto's F1 debut. If it were for sporting reasons alone, Horner would probably be walking up in Williams hospitality to talk to James Vowles about some other driver, be it Carlos Sainz or even Albon. Because if those in the Verstappen camp really can't abide the idea of a 2015 Toro Rosso reunion, it's surely Albon who should be higher up on Horner's list of drivers to buy from Williams. He's been there before, he knows what it's like to be next to Verstappen but he's got a lot more experience now.
But F1 isn't always about performance. There are probably other reasons why Colapinto is on Horner's radar. And there's a good chance he could help Red Bull keep its Latin American sponsors happy in the event of Sergio Perez's release. But whether he can be an asset from a sporting point of view is a question that is impossible to answer at the moment.
Colapinto could be a future superstar. It's just that there's little evidence to back up that claim right now.
