We're only through six rounds of the 2025 Formula 1 season, and we already have our second driver change of the season, and believe it or not, this time it has nothing to do with Red Bull.
Alpine has announced that rookie driver Jack Doohan has been demoted to reserve driver, and will be replaced by Franco Colapinto, who replaced Logan Sargeant at Williams part way through the 2024 season.
Interestingly, Colapinto has only been confirmed "for at least the next five races" which means he will make his Alpine debut at Imola on May 16 through 18, and then will be in the car at Monaco, Spain, Canada, and Austria.
Beyond that? Who knows?
Alpine's decision to axe Doohan is not particularly surprising. There have been rumblings of this since the start of the season in Australia, which only intensified amid his struggles, which included multiple costly crashes, including a massive one at Suzuka.
Doohan failed to score a point through six Grand Prix and two Sprint Races, while his teammate, Pierre Gasly, has scored 7.
The thing that was shocking about this move was that it came after a stunning leadership change the day before, when Alpine announced that team principal Oliver Oakes had resigned from the team and was replaced by advisor Flavio Briatore.
That's stunning as it continued Alpine's track record of leadership instability, but the fact that Briatore is a team principal again is flat-out jaw-dropping.
This is a guy who was once slapped with a lifetime ban from Formula 1 for his involvement in 2008's "Crashgate" scandal when he was the team principal of Renault (that team has changed names over the years, but is currently Alpine).
That ban was obviously lifted which allowed him to work as an advisor for Alpine, but for him to make a return to a team boss position is unbelievable.
Given that this leadership change occurred hours before a major driver decision, this led to speculation that Oakes ' departure was due to some sort of disagreement or power struggle within the team.
Britatore, however, shot this down.
"A lot has been said in the past 24 hours incorrectly associating the decision of Oli resigning to an alleged disagreement, or that we shared different views," Briatore said, per Formula1.com. "This is completely false and far from the truth.
"Me and Oli have a very good relationship and had long-term ambitions to drive this team forward together."
Regardless of how it happened, this kind of instability is rarely good for a team. It will be interesting to see how Alpine fares when it returns to action in a week and changes for the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix.
from The Latest & Most Breaking News With OutKick https://ift.tt/WNPZeuA