Flavio Briatore said this week he is only asking new Alpine Formula 1 driver Franco Colapinto three things: to be fast, not crash, and score points.

Shunting heavily in Q1 at Imola immediately falls short of one of those demands, as well as making a point-scoring debut very difficult.

Colapinto is fortunately OK after the incident, having had precautionary checks at the medical centre, and he will not - or should not - be judged on Imola alone.

But nonetheless this is not the impression he wanted to make on his first weekend with his new team after replacing Jack Doohan, a driver Alpine executive advisor and de facto team principal Briatore felt was not quick enough and made too many errors.

Briatore told Sky Sports Italy that Colapinto will “race as much as needed” and could “drive forever” if he meets those three aforementioned conditions. Inevitably, the feeling is that Colapinto is in a genuinely strong position to keep the drive longer-term.

“I read somewhere that he’ll have five races, but no, there’s no set limit on his races," said Briatore. That seemed an odd remark given this information came directly from Alpine’s announcement of the Doohan/Colapinto change, and included a quote from Briatore saying this is the line-up for the next five races, but in reality all he means is that Colapinto’s time is guaranteed to be that long. It could be longer.

This was already known - you don’t put a driver in mid-season if there is no serious chance of him keeping the seat should he do a good job. So the point is that this is an ongoing evaluation. And in that case, anything that happens - good or bad - should theoretically impact the decision Alpine ultimately makes.

In that context, this is an obvious mark against Colapinto. Especially as the main downside to his generally impressive Williams part-season in 2024 was that he had heavy crashes, two in Brazil (in qualifying and the race) and in qualifying in Las Vegas.

The last one was the worst, not just because of the atrocious conditions in Brazil but because Vegas was a result of poor judgement and risk management. And this accident at Imola was also a consequence of imprecision and a little overzealousness.

While Alpine did not look quite as fast as it was on Friday, the car was clearly capable of getting through to at least Q2 and Colapinto’s first run was decent, just three tenths slower than team-mate Pierre Gasly, potentially putting him in Doohan pace territory already, straight out of the blocks.

Franco Colapinto suffers a big off as he makes his Formula 1 qualifying return