Alpine team principal Oliver Oakes has explained the team’s unusually large roster of reserve drivers.
Ahead of this weekend’s opening Formula 1 round in Australia, Alpine named Kush Maini as its fourth reserve driver for the 2025 season. He joins Paul Aron, Ryo Hirakawa and Franco Colapinto who were announced previously.
Oakes said the team is anticipating developments in the driver market. He noted McLaren’s recent decision to re-sign Oscar Piastri, whom the world champions controversially poached from Alpine three years ago when he was a member of their junior driver programme.
“Obviously we had Paul already in the wings and I think the option with Franco that appeared there, that’s sort of with an eye to the future as well,” Oakes told Sky. “I think we’ve just seen it recently of McLaren tying down Oscar, the driver market is going to change and for us, we wanted to have options further down the line.”
Alpine’s decision to sign Colapinto came amid speculation executive consultant Flavio Briatore was keen to promote him in place of Jack Doohan, who will start his second F1 race for the team this weekend. Oakes acknowledged there’s “been a lot of noise” around Doohan, as a member of a rival team publicly suggested Alpine will replace him before the end of the year, but said both his drivers have the team’s backing.
“Obviously we’ve got Franco there with a big following. Paul’s done a phenomenal job in F2 and he has been quick as well, jumping in the car testing. But I think that’s a nice option to have for the team.
“We need those reserve drivers. It’s a big programme with the TPC [testing of previous cars] testing, the simulator. Obviously as a race driver, you’d love to probably not have someone clipping at your heels. But also from our side, you know, we’ve been pretty open that Jack and Pierre [Gasly] both have our full support.”
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However Oakes admitted the team’s decision to hire so many reserve drivers had added to the speculation over Doohan.
“I think I was probably a little bit too supportive, maybe, saying people should just give him a bit of a break,” he said. “We put him in that situation by having a few reserve drivers, but that gave us options as a team.
“But he did a good job in Bahrain. He’s been very good here out of the blocks. And I think you can see he’s getting a bit of confidence because it isn’t easy for the rookies. We saw then on track that, you know, a couple of early mistakes can put you on the back foot.”
Speaking after final practice, Oakes said he was pleased with Doohan’s progress so far this year.
“We just said to him, keep your head down, also enjoy yourself, because at the end of the day, that opening weekend, everything’s going to come at you pretty fast,” he explained.
“But he’s just done a very, very solid start and that’s what you want to see. You want to see a young driver building up to it, doing the basics right. He’s done a good job against Pierre so far and you can only gauge yourself [against] your team mate.”
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