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Franco Colapinto's chances of earning a full-time Formula 1 drive in 2025 have faded as Red Bull and Alpine have cooled their interest and are no longer actively pursuing the Williams driver.
Colapinto replaced Logan Sargeant at Williams for the final nine races of 2024, starting at the Italian Grand Prix, the second event after F1's summer break.
He impressed with a rapid adaptation to F1, comparing well to Alex Albon despite his inexperience and scoring points twice - in Azerbaijan and the United States.
That strong start, combined with the huge burst of commercial support that quickly emerged from South America, put Red Bull and Alpine on alert.
A big payout is required to extract Colapinto from his long-term Williams contract. The hope was that would be facilitated by his backers who would get a lot more value supporting him into a full-time race seat than in a sidelined Williams 2025 role.
Colapinto met with senior figures from both teams and is believed to have had the terms of a Red Bull deal agreed on the condition he hit certain performance parameters, which broadly meant he needed to match or beat Albon.
The intention was to have him as a serious option for the second RB team, and a left-field candidate to partner Max Verstappen depending on how convincing his performances were until the end of this season.
But since the interest in Colapinto peaked around the Mexican GP weekend, his case has weakened.
He crashed twice in Brazil, in the wet qualifying session and again in the race under the safety car, which is where Red Bull's interest began to dwindle.
Crashing again in Las Vegas qualifying seems to have cemented Red Bull's view that Colapinto would be too big a risk, and that accident put Alpine off him as well.
Alpine executive advisor Flavio Briatore wanted to explore Colapinto as an alternative for the team's already confirmed rookie Jack Doohan.
Briatore is believed to have been open to replacing Doohan even though he was announced as Pierre Gasly's 2025 team-mate back in September. There was consideration given to dropping Esteban Ocon for the final few races of this year, to evaluate Doohan in a race seat.
The leading theory for that is Alpine could then have benchmarked Doohan and, given his contract is understood to have performance-related clauses like many rookie drivers in F1, ousted him for 2025 if Colapinto was the better option and brought significant backing.
That could theoretically still happen if Doohan struggles in early 2025. But sources indicated in Qatar last week that Red Bull and Alpine are no longer actively interested in Colapinto at this point.
Williams is still keen to facilitate a move if it can and wants to give Colapinto the best chance to prove himself, hence switching him to the latest-specification front suspension mid-weekend in Qatar after he made a poor start using an older spec (as a result of recent crashes leaving Williams very light on spares).
But the team that looked most likely to sign him at one point, Red Bull, is now expected to back its Formula 2 title-challenging junior Isack Hadjar into an RB seat instead.
Hadjar concerned Red Bull after a weak Silverstone FP1 outing that seemed to confirm doubts about his composure and capacity to deal with how much goes on in an F1 car.
But it is now talking about Hadjar more positively and is clearly open to a promotion that it initially seemed reticent over a few races ago.
That may be because of how Hadjar has rebounded from a shaky spell in his F2 campaign, or an acceptance that Red Bull simply needs to back its own driver - especially as, unlike other teams, it hasn't been supporting him with significant private testing.
Red Bull does not use the 'testing of previous cars' provision in the regulations as much as its rivals, which have found up-close evaluation of their juniors in two-year-old F1 machinery to be more informative than trusting their performances in F2.
It is also known that Red Bull is aware how bad it would be for its junior programme if Hadjar won F2, or was even a strong second, and Red Bull spurned him to take a driver from elsewhere.
It will need a big swing in Colapinto's favour in Abu Dhabi to change that but even a big flourish against Albon would likely not be enough in isolation.
If Hadjar does well in Max Verstappen's Red Bull in Friday practice and equips himself well in his F2 title decider, Red Bull is unlikely to veer from that course.
However, like with Doohan, this could change again early in 2025 based on how Hadjar performs.
In the meantime, Colapinto is likely to spend 2025 on the sidelines with Williams as a reserve driver with old car testing opportunities, to develop further and be ready if a seat does open up.
