Franco Colapinto took Formula One by storm as Williams gave him his big break replacing Logan Sargeant with nine Grand Prix remaining last season. The Floridian was in his second year with the Grove based team and failed to earn a single point bar the one he inherited at the 2023 US Grand Prix.
Whilst Logan was the first US born driver to claim an F1 point in 30 years, he crossed the line at COTA in twelfth position. However, Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc were disqualified post race for a technical infringement which meant their cars had too much wear on the plank which sits underneath the car.
The width of the skid block, as its officially called, is used as a gauge by which the minimum ride height of the car is measured. Mercedes and Ferrari had set up these two cars too low in an effort to increase the downforce created by the new ground effect car designs.
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The Williams team has for a number of years employed F drivers who bring large amounts of finance to the team, but in terms of performance are less capable. Prior to Sargeant the team had employed Canadian Nicholas Latifi who across three seasons with the team and 61 Grand Prix starts had scored just nine points.
Sargeant was recruited prior to the arrival of Williams new team principal, James Vowles, who previously had been a senior member of the Mercedes team. Whilst he persistently gave the Floridian his backing, the writing was on the wall following Logan’s error in Zandvoort which resulted in a huge smash and a wrecked Williams car.
This was not the first shunt of the year for Sargeant and the extensive work required by the team put in to repair the car for its next track session in just five days time sparked the rumour mill that the American driver was on his way out of F1.
The following Tuesday it was announced that Franco Colapinto would step up alongside Alex Albon from his reserve driver role, and Logan became the latest in a number of North American born drivers to fail to make the grade in F1.
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Immediately there young Argentina made his mark thus justifying Vowles decision to offer him his bog F1 break. During qualifying in Monza, Colapinto was half a second of the pace of his team mate Albon and was set to start the race from P18. Yet come Sunday, Franco drove superbly well finishing twelfth ahead of Nico Hulkenberg, the two Alpine and V-CARB drovers and Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll.
Next tine out at one of the most physical circuits on the calendar, Colapinto qualified in P9 some three tenths of a second quicker than his team mate immediately behind him. As the chequered flag fell in Baku the Argentinian had made up a place collecting four valuable points for Williams and finishing line astern of Alex Albon.
Again at the hottest and most humid of the street circuits in Singapore, Franco was to finish just outside the points not far behind Sergio Perez. Come the US Grand Prix he took the chequered flag well ahead of his team mate scoring another valuable point for the Williams team.
The rumour mill again turned in its inevitable fashion as Christian Horner was seen deep in conversation with James Vowles. Red Bull’s Dr. Helmet Marko exacerbated the situation by suggesting the young Argentinian had a price tag on his head of $20m. The 81 year old Austrian of course preferred for the team to recruit from within and promote Liam Lawson.
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The bright start to Franco Colapinto’s F1 career was slightly tarnish as in three of the final four race weekends remaining of the season, he suffered DNF’s and had two substantial crashes in the monsoon conditions in Brazil. Although driver error in Las Vegas qualifying saw more late night work for the Williams mechanics, but come race day under the neon lights in Sin City, Franco finished in a respectable fourteenth place.
The crashes were to prove costly to the Williams driver as Red Bull dropped their interest as Dr. Marko confirmed neither Liam Lawson nor Yuki Tsunoda would be dropped for 2025 and after a long meeting behind closed doors in Milton Keynes, the decision was taken to replace Sergio Perez with New Zealander Lawson, who himself had replaced Daniel Ricciardo for the final six race weekends of the year.
With Williams retaining the services of Alex Albon on a multi-year deal together with the fact that Carlos Sainz was joining the team also on a long term contract, the inevitable lay in wait for the young Argentinian as he was relegated to the role of reserve driver for 2025.
Then with the Christmas Turkey fading from memory and the New Year well and truly in, Alpine made a shock announcement that they had acquired the services of Colapinto from Williams. This despite having announced the promotion of their Australian reserve driver, Jack Doohan, to race full time alongside Pierre Gasly. The fee paid to Williams was reported to be a cut price $10m, which threw into question the future of Doohan.
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Multiple sources were publishing the fact, that Doohan has a contract with Alpine which guarantees him just the first five races of this season, and given the Australian was less than impressive having been awarded Esteban Ocon’s seat for the final race of 2024, the writing may be quickly on the wall for Doohan.
A senior F1 writer suggested Alpine had acted in haste when announcing Jack Doohan during the autumn and the experience of losing Oscar Piastri to McLaren a year previous, made them jumpy about history repeating itself.
Yet Doohan’s junior racing career is hardly something to write home about. Since his days in karting Jack has not won any of the championships in which he’s competed. He finished third in F2 behind Theo Porchaire (Winner) and Frederick Vesti, neither of whom have made it full time into Formula One.
Doohan is in fact managed by Alpine’s ‘special consultant’ Fabio Briatore but this will only succeed in increasing the pressure on the young Aussie, given the task Renault have set the colourful Italian. Briatore is charged with turning around the Alpine’s fortunes – and quickly – so if his young protege isn’t cutting the mustard, Briatore will not wish to be seen operating with a conflict of interest.
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Vowles hopes Colpinto races in 2025
Such is the confidence of James Vowles that the former Williams driver will make it in F1, at the launch of their FW47 car today he was forced to comment on the future of Franco Colapinto. The Williams boss appeared to dodge the details of the contractual arrangement with Alpine, but admitted he hoped their ex-driver would return to the team which gave him his big F1 break.
“The important part, the main thing is this, he is an Alpine driver for a number of years,” Vowles told the assembled media. ”Their choice, fundamentally, is to choose what they want from that, and after that, I hope he comes back to Williams.”
His next comment will be of concern to thos in the Jack Doohan camp as Vowels almost went as far as to say, he expected Colapitno to be racing for Alpine this year. “There is a period of time where I hope he is racing for Alpine, and the reason we did it, is that I really want him to be racing in 2025 or 2026, and this is the best chance he has without being with us,” added Vowles.
“That is why is there, and I don’t mean that is to the detriment of Jack, I hope Jack has a successful time, but ultimately Franco is my driver who I want back in the car after a period of time, and he will return to Williams. That period of time is not set in stone where I can look you in the eyes and say it, but I can say he’ll be back at Williams at some point.”
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Whilst a number of F1 outlets are reporting the arrangement between Williams and Alpine as a loan deal for the Argentinian driver, the certainty by which Vowles believes his ex-reserve driver will be racing soon in F1 should be unnerving for Doohan. Further James Vowles is very particular in the way he expresses himself and no word is uttered without it having a precise interpretation in his mind.
James Vowles went on to address a number of other issues which have been raised over the winter break, with the FIA being top of the agenda. Having clearly stated there would be no new tests this year for flexi-wings, two weeks ago F1’s governing body did a smart about turn.
FIA single-seater chief Nikolas Tombazis in December last told Autosport that the intention was to keep the same static load tests in place for the 2025 season, saying, “Obviously, there was a lot of hoo-hah about it during the summer and early autumn.
“We had made it quite clear to teams since 2022 at least, that we were not planning to introduce any further tests on the front wing and we stuck to that.” Tombazis went on to explain at the present, the FIA had no way of providing a standard test which would treat each car and its components fairly when compared to another.
“One of the challenges in the front wing is that, compared to other parts of the car, the front wing loading is much more varied between cars in a given location and so on. So most tests relate to the load of a certain direction, certain position of application, certain magnitude must not produce a deformation,” he said.
“The most successful such tests imitate as much as possible what happens in real life with loads and, on the earlier wing for example, it’s reasonably successful. On the front wing, the variety between cars would make that quite difficult.”
James Vowles is the first team boss to be questioned about the FIA U-Turn, which will see new tests for flexing introduced following the up coming Spanish Grand Prix. For the smaller teams with less budget, there is of course the possibility that this change of heart will prevent them from pursuing their in season development plan to improve performance.
“I still trust the FIA,” Vowles stated to the gathered reporters. What I look at more is, do we have a set of regulations that are being policed to the right standards? Do we have a 2026 set of regulations that are good at what we’re producing? I didn’t think we had for many, many months, but we do again as a result of it. So ultimately, yes.”
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The margin of flex allowed by the FIA will be reduced from 15mm to 10mm, but by the time of the Spanish Grand Prix, the F1 teams will have developed new iterations of the wings they intend to start the year with. So there should be little or no extra work nor expense involved.
Whilst Vowles refused to criticise the FIA for their U-Turn he was less generous in his view of the stringent new rules to publish drivers for swearing. Now of a driver is found falling foul of the regulation three times this year, they will receive a automatic one month ban from the stewards.
“We’re picking up on some pinch points which are around whether drivers should or shouldn’t be talking that way. Now, my perspective is fairly clear on that one. When you’re in the car under pressure, I think it’s normal to expect any human to respond that way because you are putting your life on the line at the extreme,” the Williams’ team boss explained.
This was a carefully crafted response to what is a toxic issue for the drivers. In response to a previous FIA clampdown, which saw Max Verstappen made an example of for swearing, for only the second time in the history of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association they jointly signed an open letter to the president of the FIA. In which they suggested he too what the words he utter having described them all as foul mouthed “rappers”.
The Williams boss dodged the issue which is surely to upset the drivers when they meet as a collective for the first time. The idea of a one month ban for swearing is clearly ludicrous, and appears typical of the authoritarian approach of some of the middle eastern regimes where FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem was raised.
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McLaren ran their new F1 car in a camouflage livery in order to prevent the long lenses of the photographers employed by their competitors, revealing the contrast between last year’s car and this. However a number of the changes were obvious which identified the papaya liveried team cars were substantially different from their title winning MCL38…. READ MORE
With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
