Despite having only won one race in F2, Franco Colapinto had a huge positive impact on Williams in his short cameo of nine races last year. The Grove-based outfit saw a huge influx of fans from South America, where the 21-year-old hails from.
On top of that, they also onboarded several Argentine sponsors owing to Colapinto’s popularity. Now, Alpine may experience a similar boost.
The Enstone-based outfit signed Colapinto as a test and reserve driver, that too, on a multi-year deal. There has been immense excitement among the Argentine driver’s fans, as this could land him a full-time F1 seat in 2025 itself. However, not all has been plain sailing for Colapinto during this official announcement of his Alpine gig.
He had updated his Instagram bio with the line: “Formula 1 driver for @alpinef1team”. This naturally caused a lot of uproar on social media as Colapinto is only joining the French team as a reserve since they have Jack Doohan as their full-time race driver.
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Probably after seeing the negative response, the 21-year-old has changed his bio again to only have the Argentine flag, beside Alpine’s Instagram handle. Nevertheless, this move by the Enstone outfit has become a big point of contention in the F1 community, as people have started speculating about what it means for Doohan.
On top of that, Alpine also seem to be quite overzealous in their social media activity about the signing of a reserve driver. In fact, their post announcing Colapinto’s arrival has gained over a million likes on Instagram.
Are Alpine hoping to boost their commercial and social backing with Colapinto?
In the first 24 hours of Alpine‘s announcement for Colapinto, their Instagram following grew by 400k. At the time of writing, that number had increased further by 100k, with more influx of fans expected. The French team will see a lot of support from Argentina and South America if they promote Colapinto to a race seat in 2025, no matter how unsavory it may seem for Doohan.
In such a scenario, Alpine will also hope to see some Argentine sponsors coming on board as it happened for Williams. Within two months of Colapinto replacing Logan Sargeant at the British team, companies like Mercardo Libre and Globant started sponsoring them.
Even though these brands knew that the F2 driver’s promotion was a stop-gap arrangement for nine races of 2024 before Carlos Sainz joined the team in 2025, they wanted to feature on Williams’ car. And it makes sense, given Colapinto was the first Argentine driver to race in F1 in the past two decades.
