Overblown? What Colapinto's Ex-Teammate Really Thinks of His Hype

Feb.6 - Franco Colapinto's quest to re-start his F1 racing career with Alpine steps into a higher gear this week in Barcelona.

Although official pre-season testing will not kick off until later this month in Bahrain, many teams have already been running two and three-year-old cars at various circuits as part of the 'TPC' testing provisions.

Understandably, a huge amount of attention has been on Ferrari, where Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc have been testing the 2024 car for Pirelli's 2026 development program in Barcelona.

On Tuesday, Hamilton was a tenth faster than Leclerc - but the latter went significantly faster than his new seven time world championship-winning teammate a day later.

"It's great that he's gone to Ferrari," MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi, referring to 40-year-old Hamilton, told Corriere della Sera newspaper.

"I'm curious to see how it all goes. I'm really keen to see how he copes. And how Leclerc copes."

Over in the Alpine garage, meanwhile, there is also intrigue - with newly-signed 2025 reserve driver Colapinto switching between 2022 and 2023-spec cars.

Also in action in the same cars is Jack Doohan, who many tip will be replaced by Colapinto after the first five races of the season. The head-to-head in Barcelona gives Alpine an early indicator of which driver is faster.

According to Russian sports car driver Roman Rusinov, the hype surrounding Colapinto, 21, is overblown. In 2021, they were teammates at the G-Drive team in WEC.

Rusinov told Russia's Championat that he was not overly impressed either with Colapinto's driving in sports cars or in Formula 1 with Williams in 2024.

"For me personally, Franco Colapinto did not make any splash in Formula 1," he said. "He had two options drive carefully, but then he might not be remembered, or push as hard as possible, which led to constant crashes.

"At Williams, he did exactly the same thing as he did at G-Drive. Franco is a good driver in terms of lap time, but in terms of results he has never lived up to expectations. He makes a lot of mistakes.

"Unfortunately, he does not seem to learn from them. He just tries again and again to prove that he is the fastest - and makes mistakes. In the six races that Franco drove for us, he made five mistakes. In the only race where Colapinto did not make any mistakes, we won.

"So he is a good and quite fast driver, but he is still a child. Speed alone is not enough. I really like Franco, he is a great guy, but in general all this hype around him is not justified by the final result."

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