When Alpine’s controversial early Formula 1 driver change happened barely a month ago, Alpine boss Flavio Briatore asked only three things of Franco Colapinto: “he needs to be fast, not crash, and score points”. Alpine only gave its rookie Jack Doohan six grands prix before bringing Colapinto in the expectation he would be a clear upgrade. But in three races since replacing Doohan, Colapinto is 0 for 3 in meeting Briatore’s demands – and this move is really not working out as planned. Like his predecessor, Colapinto hasn’t scored a point so far, although he’s had half the number of races Doohan did. He’s shunted out of qualifying at Imola, spent a tricky first F1 weekend in Monaco off the pace, then looked slow again in Spain at the outset. It seemed like a much-need improvement was on the cards in qualifying – only for Colapinto to miss his final Q1 run with a technical problem that he might have accidentally caused himself. Unfortunately, Barcelona was irreversibly compromised by that qualifying problem, and Colapinto was consigned to a third race in a row spent stuck near the back of the field. Despite Briatore’s subsequent claims to the contrary, Alpine said […]
Nine years after the fact, only one person can truly take the blame for Valentino Rossi not winning the 2015 MotoGP world title. And it’s him. The nine-time world champion has never wavered from his stance that Marc Marquez conspired against him to ensure Jorge Lorenzo won the 2015 crown. It’s a view that has radicalised a portion of the MotoGP fanbase and is the main reason a chorus of boos tends to follow Marquez around whenever he races in front of former Rossi strongholds. It is a cloud that has forever hung over MotoGP since that Malaysian Grand Prix weekend almost a decade ago and one, sadly, that shows no signs of ever disappearing after Rossi stoked the fires again earlier this week. Taking to the ‘Mig Babol’ podcast – a show hosted by former VR46 Academy rider and current VR46 Racing team rider coach and video analyst Andrea Migno – Rossi doubled down on his rhetoric about 2015. He reiterated why he called out Marquez in the pre-event Sepang press conference after ‘irrefutable’ proof of conspiracy was discovered at Phillip Island the week before. He doubled down on the fact that, in the Malaysian GP, Marquez tried to […]
