Ricciardo COMEBACK and Ferrari chaos as brutal F1 axe looms

It's not just the regular Formula 1 season that seems to start earlier and end later every year.

The famous 'silly season' also seems to be expanding both ways, and generally covers all of the driver transfer gossip from the sensible 'open secret' moves to some of the more left-field news coming out of an F1 paddock.

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But barely into 2025 and already before a wheel has been turned, a driver change is rumoured to be in the works at Alpine.

Jack Doohan, son of grand prix motorcycle legend Mick, will be taking part in his rookie season after his race debut at the 2024 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix having replaced Esteban Ocon as Pierre Gasly's team-mate.

However, there is always drama when Flavio Briatore is around at Alpine and, after rumours circulated that Alpine wanted Franco Colapinto to race for them in 2025 after an impressive second-half season stint at Williams replacing Logan Sargeant, eyebrows were raised when he was announced as the team's reserve driver after moving from Grove earlier in January.

While Alpine are committed at this time to running Gasly and Doohan, pressure will already be piling on the Australian to deliver with little room for error given Alpine will have no hesitation to promote Colapinto at the earliest opportunity.

It seems harsh, but F1 can be brutal when it comes to driver switches after less than a year in the cockpit, as these five drivers soon found out. Be sure to cast your vote with our GPFans poll at the bottom of the page.

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Daniel Ricciardo for Nyck de Vries (AlphaTauri, 2023)

Nearly 18 months on and the odd thing is none of these two are in F1 anymore with Daniel Ricciardo being replaced after the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix by Liam Lawson at a team that changed its name the previous winter from AlphaTauri to VCARB.

Still, there were high hopes for De Vries at the junior Red Bull team, but he was the victim of being the worst performer of the four race drivers on the team's books at a time when Ricciardo had joined as a reserve driver after a miserable McLaren tenure.

Click here to celebrate Ricciardo's time in F1 and purchase the relaxed McLaren graphic tee, featuring his signature driver number, '3'.

It always seemed a matter of when and not if the Australian would end up back in some sort of Red Bull car and, after De Vries failed to score points in any of his first 10 races, he was axed after the British Grand Prix.

Alex Albon for Pierre Gasly (Red Bull, 2019)

In more Ricciardo-related chat, after he decided to join Renault for 2019, Red Bull promoted from within to pair up Gasly with team leader Max Verstappen. It never felt like a comfortable move for anyone involved at the time, except for perhaps Verstappen, who blitzed the Frenchman and in turn delivered a sledgehammer like blow after blow with every passing F1 race to his team-mate's confidence.

Christian Horner tried everything he could do to coax a performance out of Gasly but while Verstappen was never outside the top five, Gasly was rarely in it. Just 12 races was all it took for Red Bull to decide Alex Albon was instead the chosen one at AlphaTauri, as he swapped roles with Gasly ahead of that season's Belgian Grand Prix.

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Giancarlo Fisichella for Luca Badoer (Ferrari, 2009)

It may seem totally bonkers as a headline that Ferrari axed Badoer after just two races, but the real mad aspect to it was they were totally justified in doing so. After Felipe Massa's horrific injury in Hungary having been hit by debris, a replacement at short notice was needed. Michael Schumacher wasn't available so long time test driver Badoer was rewarded with the seat alongside Kimi Raikkonen.

Badoer was a competent F1 driver in the 1990s but 10 years after his previous race, he struggled enormously piloting the admittedly tricky F60 to finish well outside the points prompting a drastic Ferrari rethink. The second of those races saw Giancarlo Fisichella stun F1 by sticking a hopeless Force India on pole and then finishing second behind Raikkonen at Spa.

The stars aligned. The veteran Italian, coming to the end of his fine F1 career, was never going to say no to a Ferrari seat and so a deal was quickly made to parachute him in to replace Badoer until the end of the season.

Robert Kubica for Jacques Villeneuve (BMW-Sauber, 2006)

Villeneuve wasn't new to the team at this point but this was BMW's first official F1 season as an effective works outfit after taking over Sauber, and they had just poached the exciting youngster Robert Kubica from Renault.

An F1 debut was in waiting and with a German driver in Nick Heidfeld producing solid enough results in one seat, there was always going to be pressure on Villeneuve.

The 1997 world champion failed to impress and in a career that had long been on the decline, his crash at the German Grand Prix was all BMW needed as an excuse to promote Kubica into the race seat and effectively end the Canadian's F1 career.

Nigel Mansell for David Coulthard (Williams, 1994)

Williams were already in a crisis just three races into the season after Ayrton Senna was tragically killed at the San Marino Grand Prix. Damon Hill was promoted to team leader to challenge the emerging young star Schumacher at Benetton for the F1 title and a young David Coulthard stepped in as his team-mate to make his F1 debut in the toughest of circumstances.

Coulthard showed enough promise to suggest he could carry on but there was something he had no power over, F1 politics. With no Senna there was no existing F1 world champion or big name on the grid and a deal was made behind the scenes to get 1992 world champion and British favourite Nigel Mansell back into Williams alongside Hill.

Mansell still had US commitments so could only do the French Grand Prix before handing back to Coulthard. But despite Coulthard's growth as the season went on, he still had to hand his seat back to Mansell for the final three grands prix.

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