Finlay McSporran
Published: 16:15, 9th May 2025
Alpine have replaced Jack Doohan with Franco Colapinto, just six races into the season. This comes after team principal Oliver Oakes resigned just one day earlier.
This has lead many to question what’s going on behind closed doors at the Enstone-based team, and where the power actually lies.
The driver swap
The writing was already on the walls for Doohan before the season had even started. Despite having two drivers already under contract, the team signed Argentinian driver Franco Colapinto, on loan from Williams, as a reserve driver.
Colapinto had impressed during his brief stint at Williams last year, despite a few crashes, scoring points twice and generally being close (if not faster) that his teammate Alex Albon. He also brought with him a huge amount of financial backing from his Argentinian sponsors, far more than what Doohan brought in.
With that in mind, it was obvious that Alpine were lining him up for a race seat when they brought him in as a reserve, especially when you consider that they paid an estimated £3.8m just to brake him out of his Williams contract.
This put a huge and unnecessary amount of pressure on Doohan before his F1 career had even started. Before the first race in Australia, reports started to emerge that Doohan’s contract only lasted six races, and sure enough after round six and Miami last week the team announced that Colapinto would be replacing Doohan from the next round in Imola, with Doohan becoming the teams reserve driver.
Interestingly however, the team only said that Colapinto will be in the car for the next five races, suggesting that another driver swap may be possible.
Alpine explained this in a recent statement that said: “As part of an on-going assessment of its driver line-up, the team has made the decision to rotate one of its race seats for the next five rounds of the 2025 FIA Formula One World Championship”.
“BWT Alpine Formula One Team therefore announces that Franco Colapinto will be paired with Pierre Gasly from the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, ahead of a new evaluation before the British Grand Prix in July.
“Jack Doohan remains an integral part of the team and will be the first-choice Reserve Driver for this period of time.”
Despite the huge financial boost that Colapinto will almost certainly bring to Alpine by becoming a full-time driver, the decision to demote Doohan so early into his F1 career has been very controversial, however it isn’t too surprising when you consider that Flavio Briatore, the mastermind behind F1’s ‘Crashgate’ scandal, is the teams executive advisor.
Oakes Resignation
So, when Alpine announced on Tuesday that their team principal Oliver Oakes has resigned, many people believed that it was the result of a disagreement between the Oakes and Briatore over the driver situation.
Alpine stress that this isn’t the case however, saying Oakes left for “personal reasons”, and that the timing was just a coincidence, with Briatore himself saying “Me and Oli have a very good relationship and had long-term ambitions to drive this team forward together”.
This is something that Oakes backed up in his own statement which said: “It is a personal decision for me to step down. Flavio has been like a father to me, nothing but supportive since I took the role, as well as giving me the opportunity.”
Even if this is true, it continues a worrying trend for Alpine, as Oakes becomes the latest team principal to resign or be sacked from the team having lasted just 10 months.
Who’s actually in charge?
Despite the respect that Briatore and Oakes have for each other, the two didn’t always see eye to eye, and as the public face of the team Oakes often had to defend decisions that he hadn’t made. For example, the decision to drop Esteban Ocon before the final race in Abu Dhabi last year was Flavio’s choice, and not one Oakes necessarily agreed with.
This suggests that the real power at Alpine lies with Briatore, and that the team principal is often the one who has to bear responsibility for any mistakes the team made. As mentioned earlier, Oakes is one of many senior staff at Alpine to leave in recent years, with the team having gone through three team principals in the last 18 months alone.
This suggests a deeper problem within the upper management of the team owned by Renault CEO Luca De Meo. Ever since they returned to F1 in 2016 they have often spoke about ‘five year plans’ to return to the front of the field, but have been nothing more than upper midfield runners at best.
This was part of the reason Alpine brought Briatore back to Enstone in the first place, as the Italian has had a lot of success with this team in the past, having won titles with Michael Schumacher in 1994-1995 and Fernando Alonso in 2005-2006 as the team principal, albeit in a very different era of F1 compared to today.
With Oakes now gone, his duties as team principal will be taken over by Briatore who, hopefully for Alpine, can make Enstone a much more effective and serious outfit, and potentially lead them to tile winning success once again.
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