Alpine director Steve Nielsen believes Franco Colapinto needs space and time to fully develop in Formula 1. The Argentine is on the eve of his first full season in 2026. After a difficult 2025, Alpine gave him the benefit of the doubt and kept him for the upcoming F1 year. According to Nielsen, he has shown at times that he possesses the necessary pace.
Franco Colapinto made his Formula 1 debut in mid‑2024, when he took Logan Sargeant’s seat at Williams. His arrival was striking: in only his second race he reached Q3 and immediately scored his first championship points. A week later he recorded another top‑10 finish at the United States GP. Still, Williams did not offer him a seat for 2025 — the team had already signed star driver Carlos Sainz. Colapinto moved into a reserve role at Alpine, which from the Imola GP handed him Jack Doohan’s regular seat.
‘Sometimes he was faster than Gasly’
That switch, however, did not turn into a success story. Colapinto was unable to sustain his strong form and scored zero championship points in 2025. The cause of that sporting downturn was partly rooted in Alpine’s own struggles. The team endured a harsh year and finished last in the constructors’ standings with just 22 championship points. Nevertheless, the team retained faith in Colapinto and awarded him a full race seat for 2026. Steve Nielsen clearly sees potential in the 22‑year‑old driver.
“Franco is a young driver,” he told reporters at the season finale in Abu Dhabi. “We’ve seen other young drivers go through good and difficult spells; he’s in that same phase. Earlier this year there were races where he could keep up with Pierre (Gasly, ed.), and in a few cases he may even have been quicker. He’s simply in that phase and we’ll give him all the support he needs to be as quick as possible. It doesn’t matter whether he’s quicker than Pierre or only close; the main thing is that we have two drivers scoring points.”
Struggling Alpine
“We’ve had some setbacks this year,” Nielsen admitted. “Only one car scored points, which wasn’t enough, while the other car scored zero points with two different drivers in it. We need stability in the second car, and we must give that talent time to develop and score points for us.” Alpine‘s disappointing season also had a technical cause. The team decided early to halt development of the car to focus fully on the new 2026 regulations. As a result, Gasly and Colapinto were, in the closing stages of the season, almost always at the back.
“I think the hard reality is that our car wasn’t quick enough to score points,” Nielsen acknowledged. “Both drivers, in my view, are better than the car suggests. If the car were simply good, both drivers are more than capable of extracting the maximum from it. We need to build a much better car, a far better car, and only then will we see what the drivers are truly worth.”
