This is a new format where I just briefly introduce a topic to you that isn't really worth a deep analysis but should be talked about. I hope you like it and enjoy :)
What happened here?
So basically, Jack Doohan didn't perform well enough, so they sacked him and swapped their back-up driver, Colapinto, in for the next five races.
What's weird about that?
Well...where to begin? So, to clear things up, the general decision of dropping Doohan is okay and well-handled in my opinion. They argued that, last season, their car was terrible in the beginning, so there wasn't anything to expect. But now that it is quite competitive as Gasly repeatedly showed, they want to gain the benefit from that and need to score points. Doohan obviously didn't perform all too well, even though in Miami, he just got unlucky that F1's headhunter Liam Lawson targeted him. Doohan starts 15,5th and finishes 15th on average, which is exactly four positions behind Gasly on average. Gasly also only scored 7 points so far, but he was arguably close to scoring more, for example, in Saudi Arabia, where he started 9th but got taken out by Tsunoda.
However, there's more to it.
Alpine Team principal Oliver Oakes was ordered to leave with him. But why is that?
Well, to understand that, we have to know who Oliver Oakes even is and what his job was.
Oliver Oakes
... was the Team Principal of Alpine since July 2024. He was hired because of his exceptional reputation. He founded the junior Team HiTech Grand Prix, which started in F2, F3, and the British F4 competition. As the Team Principal of HiTech, he therefore got to know a lot of junior talents and learned a lot about being a good team principal overall. So in July 2024, Alpine's new Executive Advisor Flavio Briatore was like "Hell yeah, that guy knows what he is doing, let's get him in here", and Alpine hired Oliver Oakes as the new Team Principal. Theoretically, Oakes is the Head of the team and makes the decisions; practically, however, Briatore decides everything and Oakes has to defend the decision publicly. Such as the decision to drop Doohan for Colapinto, when Oakes tried to give Paul Aron (not Aaron Paul) from his HiTech F2 team a chance. Now, not that I have anything against Colapinto, I think he will do great, but Briatore hired him because of his good knowledge only to ignore it not even 12 months later.
Flavio Briatore
You might have heard of him and/or his "Crash-Gate-Scandal" from 2009, when he rejoined F1 in May 2024 as Executive Advisor of Alpine. To sum up the Scandal, he told one of his drivers to deliberately crash during the 2008 Singapore GP, so that a safety car would be deployed to get Fernando Alonso to win the Race and therefore the championship. He was banned from F1 until 2012, when the FIA and their opponents (cuz it wasn't only Briatore involved) agreed to let down the lawsuit, however, nobody wanted to hire him in F1 anymore due to his bad reputation. But that was just until Alpine was so desperate, they saw no choice but to hire him, since, despite that scandal, he had done a good job before.
However, a downside of him is that he loves Power, as you'll see in the following.
Colapinto
... was bought by Alpine as a stand-in/backup driver for this season due to his good performances last season. Nonetheless this i quite unusual, normally teams don't pay any fees to hire backup drivers, but Briatore wanted Colapinto enough, to pay for him seemingly (Nobodys gonna know why they hired Doohan in the first place then but who am I). Rumour has it, that Colpaintos Argentinian market value amounts to about Two Million USDs. Which is crazy sponsor money for a Rookie driver.
Now it only makes sense that these sponsors only want to pay their money when Colapinto actually drives. That's why Briatore let Colapinto step in instead of Aron (which makes sense, since they already bought him so here I can't see why Oakes wouldn't want him, but then again, he's the principal and I'm not)
Why does Colapinto only get five races, especially since that would drop him during the Silverstone - Red Bull Ring doubleheader?
Simply because not all 2.000.000$ have been paid yet :)
So what's the point?
Briatore uses his controversially gained power to make a profit at all costs. That's not what you wanna see in F1, but what only makes sense with the money flowing in these spheres. It's hard to sum all that up really, but the point is that Briatore hired Oakes because of his knowledge, only to drop him due to money reasons, when that was his goal from the beginning. Briatore already bought Colapinto (assumingly against Oakes's advice), so Oakes never really seemed to have the power that he should. In other words, Briatore seems like a power user for maximised cash flow, regardless of casualties.
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