Fernando Alonso is refusing to close a door on a stunning return to Alpine for 2027, even as his own team, Aston Martin, insists there is nothing to close.
Sky Italia’s Roberto Chinchero and other paddock reporters say Alpine, resurgent this season and newly backed by Gucci’s money, sees the two-time champion as a real option alongside Pierre Gasly, working through Flavio Briatore, who has managed Alonso’s career for two decades and now sits inside Alpine as its executive advisor.
The man who stands to lose his seat if that happens, Franco Colapinto, is suddenly racing against a rumour as much as the clock.
Aston Martin’s Rebuild Has Gone Off Course
Newey’s rebuild of Aston Martin was supposed to change everything this year. Instead, the project has fallen apart in a way almost nobody predicted in February.
The AMR26 hasn’t carried a single aerodynamic upgrade since March, Honda’s power unit has produced vibrations severe enough that Newey flagged a risk of nerve damage to both drivers, and Alonso retired from his home-region Canadian Grand Prix with a cockpit issue traced to that same fault.
Rather than keep developing a car it no longer trusts, Aston Martin has effectively abandoned the AMR26 — Newey is building a replacement from scratch, targeting a debut around Spa or Zandvoort, and even his own team admits it won’t be enough to fight at the front when it lands.
Alpine’s Growing Appeal
Alpine, in the meantime, is having the kind of season that makes a two-time champion reconsider his options.
Switching from a factory Renault engine to a customer Mercedes unit has lifted the team from last in the constructors’ standings to fifth, Gucci has signed on as title sponsor from 2027, and the team’s stock in the driver market has risen to match.
Alpine has also been separately linked with Mercedes’ George Russell and Williams’ Alex Albon as it weighs its options. A team that finished last a year ago is suddenly being treated as a destination.
The reporting splits depending on who you ask, which is itself revealing. GPblog, which first reported on Alonso and Briatore meeting in the Alpine hospitality unit in Barcelona, says the team’s actual priority is to keep faith with Colapinto, the driver it built around after handing him Jack Doohan’s seat in 2025, and that the Alonso links remain speculative for now.
Chinchero’s reporting points the other way, treating Colapinto’s situation as directly tied to what Alonso decides. Aston Martin’s own response sits between the two: a team spokesperson told the Spanish outlet Soy Motor only that “it’s not true, it’s just a paddock rumour”, the kind of line a team uses whether a story is baseless or simply early.
Why Colapinto Has Become Central to the Story
What isn’t in dispute is how far Colapinto has come, or how exposed that progress now leaves him. After scoring zero points across the 2024 season alongside Gasly, he has out-qualified his teammate for the first time this year, and taken back-to-back career-best finishes, seventh in Miami, sixth in Montreal, all on a contract that runs out at the end of this season. On current form, he’s outperforming a teammate signed through 2028.
He’s also the one with the least control over what happens next.
The Decision May Come Down to Performance
Briatore sits at the centre of both halves of this story: the man advising Alonso on his next move, and the man who would have to sign off on ending Colapinto’s. Aston Martin isn’t only denying a driver swap, it is quietly conceding that the car built to save its season will arrive too late, and too underpowered, to be a real title threat this year.
Alonso has stopped pretending otherwise, telling reporters in Spain that his team is fielding both the slowest car and the weakest engine on the grid. For a driver who has already said he’ll decide his future after the summer break, that is not a small admission to make in public.
Nothing here is resolved, and Alonso has been careful to keep it that way — refusing to rule out a return to Alpine, without confirming one either. The next real signal won’t come from the rumour mill; it will come from the stopwatch.
If Aston Martin’s new car is competitive when it lands at Spa or Zandvoort, the case for Alonso staying gets considerably stronger, and Alpine’s interest is likely to cool. If it isn’t, Alonso has already said his decision will come after the summer break — and Colapinto, Briatore, and the rest of the paddock will be watching the same data he is.
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Craig Alderson is Senior Editor at TJ13, where Craig oversees newsroom operations and coordinates editorial output across the site. With a background in online sports reporting and motorsport magazine editing, he plays a key role in maintaining consistency, speed, and accuracy in TJ13’s coverage.
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