Is Flavio Briatore already looking for his next driver? After five races with Franco Colapinto, Valtteri Bottas could now get his chance…
Behind the scenes of the 2025 Formula 1 season, the next driver change may be looming. After Red Bull replaced Liam Lawson with Yuki Tsunoda before Suzuka and Franco Colapinto took over Jack Doohan’s cockpit at Alpine starting in Imola, there could now be a third flying change. Right in the middle of the rumors: Valtteri Bottas.
That’s because, with the Austrian Grand Prix, Franco Colapinto has now completed the five race weekends he was given in the team’s original press release. And team boss Flavio Briatore is clearly not satisfied with Colapinto’s performance.
When Colapinto finished 14th in qualifying at the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, Briatore was annoyed afterwards, saying the car was “clearly good enough for Q3,” but “we still can’t get both cars where they should be. Franco made it through Q1, but was too far off to reach Q3. We need to improve that if we want to put both cars in a more competitive position.”
After Sunday’s race, in which Gasly finished 13th and Colapinto 15th, with ten seconds between the two Alpine drivers, Briatore added in Alpine’s official press release: “Ultimately, after another race without points, we have lost ground to our direct rivals in the championship, and frankly, this level of performance is increasingly worrying.”
It’s no secret that Briatore is not a Doohan fan and that a return of the Australian is considered unlikely, even if Colapinto were to be dropped. But who else could replace Colapinto? The name Mick Schumacher has been mentioned in this context, especially in the German media. However, in the event of another driver change during the season, things seem to be heading in a completely different direction.
Friday evening in Spielberg: Briatore-Wolff meeting
Late on Friday evening, a meeting lasting around half an hour took place between Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff and Briatore in the Mercedes hospitality area in Spielberg. The subject of the conversation is unknown. However, rumors subsequently spread in the paddock that it could have been about the availability of Mercedes test driver Bottas.
When asked about the meeting, Wolff played it down. He said he had a “coffee house friendship” with Briatore, so short meetings were nothing unusual. When the Mercedes team boss is at home in Monaco, he has breakfast almost every day at Briatore’s Patisserie Cova, where he enjoys “a cappuccino and a croissant with cream.” “And that’s where I always see him.”
When asked what the Spielberg meeting was about, Wolff simply said that Briatore already had a Mercedes engine for Alpine and that “everything had been clarified.” When asked specifically whether he had perhaps arranged for Bottas to join Briatore instead, Wolff dismissed the question with a casual wave of his hand: “Good idea. I didn’t do that.”
That doesn’t necessarily contradict the rumors. According to reports, the idea of letting Bottas race for Alpine in the near future is still just a theoretical possibility that has not yet been discussed in concrete terms between Alpine and Mercedes. However, Briatore’s request is said to have been passed on to Wolff.
Mercedes has not commented on the rumors. In the past, however, the team has always emphasized that it would not stand in the way of its in-house test and reserve drivers if they were offered the chance to race in Formula 1 again elsewhere. And Alpine will be a Mercedes customer team from 2026 anyway.
Bottas would not be the first driver from the Mercedes squad to be placed with the French team with the help of Wolff and his management team. Esteban Ocon couldn’t find a job for 2019 and became Mercedes’ third driver before landing a regular seat with the Renault factory team for 2020. With the active support of Wolff and Mercedes.
Colapinto vs. Gasly: What the data says
There is no question that Briatore needs to take action, and this is also backed up by data and facts. In qualifying so far, Colapinto has been on average 0.48 seconds slower than Gasly, and 0.29 seconds slower in the races. This puts him roughly on par with Doohan, who lost an average of 0.45 seconds to Gasly in qualifying and 0.35 seconds in the race.
To put that into perspective, the only bigger gaps between teammates currently are at Red Bull Racing between Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda, and at Aston Martin between Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll. To Stroll’s credit, however, he only falls significantly behind Alonso in qualifying. On average, he is only 0.26 seconds behind the Spaniard in race pace.
Whether and when Bottas will actually move to Alpine is still written in the (Mercedes) stars. But anyone who knows Briatore knows that things like this can happen very quickly under certain circumstances. A change before the next race in Silverstone seems ambitious, as a seat would have to be made for Bottas and other adjustments would have to be made. But after the Hungarian Grand Prix on August 3, there will be a four-week summer break…
