Doohan sacking twist as F1 basketcase’s new tumult exposed — with villain at chaotic centre
The Alpine meat grinder continues churning.
In a remarkable twist in the opening months of the French team’s 2025 campaign, team principal Oliver Oakes, appointed only last August, has resigned with immediate effect.
Executive adviser Flavio Briatore will take the reins of the French-owned, British-based team.
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The news came just before confirmation Jack Doohan has been dropped for reserve driver Franco Colapinto from the next grand prix at Imola - but only for five races.
“As part of an on-going assessment of its driver line-up, the team has made the decision to rotate one of its race seats for the next five rounds of the 2025 FIA Formula One World Championship,” the team said.
“BWT Alpine Formula One Team therefore announces that Franco Colapinto will be paired with Pierre Gasly from the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, ahead of a new evaluation before the British Grand Prix in July.
“Jack Doohan remains an integral part of the team and will be the first-choice Reserve Driver for this period of time.”
While Oakes’s departure isn’t the announcement anyone was anticipating today, perhaps in retrospect it should have been expected.
It’s just the latest in a long, long line of management reshuffles.
Oakes was the team’s sixth team principal in as many seasons. Briatore, assuming his responsibilities, is its seventh — that’s one team principal every 9.5 months since 2020.
Renault/Alpine team principals
Cyril Abiteboul: 2016 to 2020 (Renault)
Davide Brivio and Marcin Budkowski: 2021
Otmar Szafnauer: 2022 to mid 2023
Bruno Famin: mid 2023 to mid 2024
Oliver Oakes: mid 2024 to mid 2025
Flavio Briatore: mid 2025 (ongoing)
This list doesn’t include the myriad other senior technical and other staff to have left the organisation since its 2021 Alpine rebrand.
It also doesn’t include its leaky driver roster, from which Daniel Ricciardo, Fernando Alonso and Oscar Piastri have all departed on their own volition, in all three cases blindsiding the team.
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Nor does it consider Renault shuttering its historic engine plant in France, the company’s only continuous F1 thread to have survived its comings and goings from the sport over decades.
In short, Enstone has been roiling for almost a decade, lacking the crucial consistency that builds up a team from the midfield into victory contention.
The search for consistency is why Flavio Briatore was brought in as part of last year’s reshuffle. Operating at a strategic level above Oakes’s day-to-day remit, the experienced and title-winning executive was supposed to steady the ship.
So much for that idea.
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INTERNAL FRICTION LAID BARE
It’s impossible to see Oakes’s departure as unconnected to the rumours swirling around Alpine’s unmoored driver line-up.
It’s also impossible not to see the last six months in a new light as a result.
Briatore has long been known to be the driving force behind his team’s pursuit of Colapinto dating back to rumours the French squad was pursuit the Argentine shortly after he made his debut for Williams last year, just weeks after Doohan signed his full-time contract for 2025.
Briatore was subsequently reportedly instrumental in securing Colapinto on loan during the off-season.
That move was never about anything other than giving Colapinto a race seat sooner rather than later. Williams boss James Vowles said as much.
“The best chance he has is with Alpine as far as [getting on the grid],” he revealed during the pre-season, per ESPN. “That’s why he’s there.”
But Doohan has always been understood to have the confidence of the team. He was impressive in his extensive private testing campaign, and his development work last year in the simulator was highly regarded, with former team boss Bruno Famin describing him as the “unsung hero” of the team’s turnaround from its worst start of this era.
He’s an extremely hard worker and dedicated team player, and his elevation to the race team was seen as well deserved.
But Briatore in his big-picture role saw things differently. There were uncertainties about Doohan’s ultimate potential, and his sponsor portfolio is relatively small.
Colapinto, on the other hand, is a proven scorer and has a wealth of big-money sponsors.
It must also be seen in the context of Briatore’s motivation to compete in Formula 1. From his first involvement in the 1990s to his departure in disgrace in 2009 — more on that below — he’s insisted that F1 must see itself as an entertainment business first and a sport second.
Colapinto’s sponsorship is about more than just dollars; it’s a new, untapped business network to be capitalised upon.
It’s lucrative enough that F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali has already raised the possibility of a return to Argentina.
And Colapinto is bringing a new legion of fans to the sport too. The grandstands in Miami comprised a healthy Argentine contingent that had apparently bought tickets expecting their man to have secured a seat by now.
But the clash of ideas appears to have led to friction between the executive and operational management, with a distinct impression a divide between Briatore and the race team on some matters.
Oakes’s hedged responses to the constant rumours about Doohan’s status at the team now take on a new light.
On the one hand Oakes was representing his team’s backing of the Aussie — with himself also reportedly defensive of Doohan’s position — but on the other he had he had to defer to his executive.
“I think also he [Doohan] should be given a bit of space to just get on with it for a few rounds,” he said, per ESPN, during pre-season testing.
“We’re here to go racing, we want the best driver in the car, the best engine in the car.
“Flavio said it, didn’t he? We’re starting the season with Jack and Pierre [Gasly], and then let’s see how it all goes.”
As recently as Friday in Miami — at which point Doohan appeared to have secured his seat until at least the mid-season break — Oakes attempted to walk both sides of the street.
“We’ve been pretty open as a team that that’s just noise,” he said. “Jack needs to continue doing a good job, but it’s natural that there’s always speculation there.”
“As it is today, Jack is our driver along with Pierre, We’ve been pretty clear on that. We always evaluate, but today that is the case.”
The Race has reported that Briatore told Doohan on Sunday night that he would be axed. Oakes’s usual post-race media session was cancelled.
A team principal without decision-making power is no team principal at all.
There have been long-running suspicions that Briatore was pulling the strings all along. Now it’s official.
“Having reviewed the opening races of the season, we have come to the decision to put Franco in the car alongside Pierre for the next five races,” he said on Wednesday.
“With the field being so closely matched this year, and with a competitive car, which the team has drastically improved in the past 12 months, we are in a position where we see the need to rotate our line-up. We also know the 2026 season will be an important one for the team and having a complete and fair assessment of the drivers this season is the right thing to do in order to maximise our ambitions next year.
“We continue to support Jack at the team, as he has acted in a very professional manner in his role as a race driver so far this season. The next five races will give us an opportunity to try something different and after this time period we will assess our options.”
To be fair to Briatore, he’s a proven title-winning team boss, having taken Enstone under its previous guises to multiple drivers and constructors titles. He’s not in charge for nothing.
But there’s also a reason he’d been out of the sport for 15 years before reappearing as executive adviser to the Renault CEO last year before springboarding his way back into the team’s top job.
WHO IS FLAVIO BRIATORE?
The Formula 1 paddock is home to more than a few colourful characters, but Briatore’s trumps the lot of them.
Born in a small Italian town but with big ambitions, his journey to Formula 1 has traversed the worlds of insurance, hospitality and fashion. He’s been convicted of fraud more than once, at which point his path diverted to the Virgin Islands to avoid extradition back to Italy.
Bizarrely it was a fortuitous detour. It was during his time in the US territory that he began working for Italian fashion mogul Luciano Benetton, for whom he rapidly ascended to manage the Benetton brand’s United States operation
Briatore would say in a later in interview that it was during that time, in his late 30s, that he first considered himself wealthy.
But life had one more dramatic change of course in store for the controversial Italian.
It started, of all places, in Adelaide in 1988. It was the first time he saw Formula 1 in the flesh.
He’d never been a fan, but Benetton had recently bought the Enstone-based Toleman team and wanted someone he trusted to run its commercial operations.
Briatore accepted, but before long he was running the entire team.
It was the start of a successful but controversial era.
Existing staff were sacked to make way for external hires only for them to be sacked too and original staff to be brought back.
His most notable poaching was Michael Schumacher. The German had made his debut with the Jordan team, but Briatore ruthlessly exploited a hole in his contract after just one race to bring him to Enstone.
His arrival preceded key recruits, the names of whom long-term F1 fans will find instantly recognisable: Ross Brawn, Rory Byrne and Pat Symonds.
It was a super combination for what rapidly turned into a super team. Schumacher won the 1994 championship, and he and the team did the title double in 1995.
But the first of those titles remains controversial, and not just because of Schumacher’s last-race crash with Damon Hill that secured him the crown, over which opinions will forever be split.
Benetton was accused of cheating more than once that season. The most memorable incident was the discovery of banned launch control software in the car’s ECU. The team didn’t deny the software existed but successfully argued that there was no proof it was ever used.
It was subsequently found to have illegally removed the fuel filter from its refuelling equipment to slow down the flow rate as part of an investigation to Jos Verstappen’s fuel fire at that year’s German Grand Prix. The FIA World Motor Sport Council found the team guilty but let it off without punishment.
Schumacher later revealed that the controversy of that season led to him exiting his contract a year early to join Ferrari.
CRASHGATE
Despite its remarkable titles, Benetton quickly fell into decline. Much of the super team followed Schumacher to Ferrari, where they formed an unstoppable championship-winning juggernaut.
Briatore was removed from his post at the end of 1997 but didn’t leave F1, and when Renault bought the team ahead of the 2000 season, the Italian was brought back as team principal.
With the backing of the French manufacturer, he identified his next Schumacher: Fernando Alonso, whom he still manages to this day.
Alonso was the team’s test driver in 2002 and promoted to the race team the following season, when he claimed his maiden grand prix victory.
By 2005 Alonso and Renault had won both titles, and when they went back to back in 2006 it seemed certain that a dynasty was on the cards.
But again the project wobbled. Renault was considering leaving the sport — the eternal story of the French giant in F1 — and Alonso left the team for an ill-fated stint at McLaren.
Michelin had also withdrawn from the sport ahead of 2007, leaving Bridgestone as the sole supplier at a time competition between tyre manufacturers had been an important performance differentiator.
Alonso rejoined in 2008, but by then the rot had set in, and things were getting desperate.
The team had just one podium after 14 rounds when the sport arrived in Singapore for the first-ever F1 night race.
It was there that Briatore and Symonds cooked up a plan to guarantee an Alonso victory that might galvanise the team and ensure Renault’s continuing involvement.
Alonso’s teammate, Nelson Piquet Junior, was instructed to crash at an opportune moment of the race, after Alonso had made a pit stop, to cause a safety car, jumble the field and move the Spaniard into the lead.
It worked a treat, with Alonso scoring the team’s first victory in two years.
It looked suspicious at the time, but it wasn’t until Piquet Junior was sacked the following year and spilt the beans that F1’s biggest ever cheating scandal was blown open.
After a lengthy and high-profile investigation Briatore was banned from motorsport for life for orchestrating the scam. Symonds was excluded for five years.
A French court would later overturn the bans, ruling them illegal.
Symonds returned to the sport in an engineering consultancy capacity in 2011, later working for Williams, Sky Sports and Formula 1 itself before taking up his current position consulting for Cadillac’s 2026 entry.
Briatore, however, his F1 brand toxic, kept his distance.
“I don’t miss it, though,” he said in an interview with the UK Times in 2019. “It’s changing and is no longer the sport I knew.
“It’s become very boring, very predictable.”
Now back in the sport, his return is proving anything but boring and predictable.
Whether that’s to Alpine’s benefit remains to be seen.