Franco Colapinto's push to secure a future Alpine race seat is gaining momentum as he participates in on-track testing in Barcelona.
Although official pre-season testing in Bahrain is still weeks away, multiple teams have been running two and three-year-old cars under the 'TPC' (Testing of Previous Cars) provisions.
Much of the latest spotlight in Barcelona has been on Ferrari, where Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc have been logging laps in the 2024 car as part of Pirelli's 2026 tire development program.
Early reports indicated that Hamilton was a tenth faster than Leclerc on Tuesday, but the Monegasque went significantly quicker than his new teammate a day later.
MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi admitted he's intrigued by the dynamic between Hamilton and Leclerc at Ferrari this season.
"It's great that he's gone to Ferrari," Rossi told Corriere della Sera. "I'm curious to see how it all goes. I'm really keen to see how he copes. And how Leclerc copes."
Over at Alpine, another battle is unfolding, with newly-signed reserve driver Colapinto and Jack Doohan sharing the team's 2022 and 2023-spec cars in Barcelona.
The direct comparison gives Alpine an early performance assessment of both drivers—significant given ongoing speculation that Colapinto could replace Doohan after the first five races of the 2025 season.
However, not everyone is convinced by the hype surrounding the 21-year-old Argentinian.
Russian sports car driver Roman Rusinov, who was Colapinto's teammate at G-Drive Racing in WEC in 2021, believes the young talent is being overrated.
"For me personally, Franco Colapinto did not make any splash in Formula 1," Rusinov told Championat.
"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."
Rusinov claimed that Colapinto's aggressive approach often backfires - leading to 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."
Despite his speed, Rusinov believes Colapinto still lacks maturity.
"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."
