What Franco Colapinto is now doing behind the scenes shows how desperate he is to retain his Alpine F1 seat

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Since returning to Formula 1 with Alpine, Franco Colapinto hasn’t been able to achieve much of note and has struggled for pace.

The Argentine driver is yet to finish higher than 13th and has been well behind teammate Pierre Gasly in both races where they have reached the end. Alpine will have imagined a higher level of performance when conducting a swap with Jack Doohan a few weeks ago.

Colapinto has a lot to adjust to, and it will take time, but he won’t be able to sit 21st and last in the drivers’ championship forever.

His team are last in the constructors’ without having the slowest car, and he needs to show a glimmer of hope at some point in the coming races. Otherwise, his boss, Flavio Briatore, may be tempted to make another change. Finishing seven places behind Gasly at the Spanish Grand Prix is not a good sign.

Alpine sent one imperfect radio message to Colapinto and could have helped him a little more during qualifying in Spain. It was one of the reasons why he was all the way down in 19th after Q1.

Briatore’s Monaco Grand Prix decision says a lot about how the team is being run at the moment. If he is calling the strategy shots, are they really optimising their returns?

READ MORE: Alpine now privately considering five-DNF F1 driver ‘behind the scenes’ to replace Franco Colapinto if he doesn’t perform

Franco Colapinto’s return to Alpine’s factory shows how desperate he is to retain his F1 seat

Given how the Formula 1 driver market works in mysterious ways, Doohan could replace Colapinto later in the season if the team comes to the conclusion that they made the wrong decision.

Their current instability comes at a bad time, with the 2026 F1 regulations approaching and little time left to put the provisions in place to ensure a positive future for the team.

Guenther Steiner thinks Colapinto will keep his Alpine seat after the end of his five-race deal, which is just weeks from ending. The 22-year-old has just under four more weeks to prove himself.

And he’s attempting to continue on the right foot by heading back to Alpine’s factory at Enstone, rather than taking a break ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix, according to Infobae.

He wants to study the data, spend time in the simulator, and gain every bit of knowledge that he can in a bid to keep his race seat. His approach will impress his engineers.

READ MORE: Alpine made one sacrifice in Franco Colapinto talks with Williams that could haunt them one day

How much slower has Franco Colapinto been than Pierre Gasly over one lap?

In Spain, Gasly’s fastest qualifying lap was over 1.1 seconds faster than Colapinto’s, but that doesn’t factor in track improvement.

In Q1, under the same conditions, they were just 0.253 seconds apart. That’s not bad for someone in their third race in a new car, with little Formula 1 experience.

In Monaco, the gap in Q1 was 0.503 seconds and in Imola it was 0.319 seconds. In other words, Colapinto’s one-lap pace has ever so slightly improved compared to his teammate since his debut.

The upcoming Canadian Grand Prix is a track he won’t have raced on before and will present a steep challenge, before heading to Austria after that.

By the end of June, he’ll know where his future lies and so will the Alpine team. As long as he keeps chipping away in qualifying and avoids putting his car in the wall, he should have a good chance of sticking around.