- Alpine F1 breaks silence on death threats and sabotage claims.
- Ocon received FIA president Ben Sulayem’s personal letter of support.
- A pre-Suzuka gearbox failure, explains Colapinto’s spec difference.
The BWT Alpine F1 Team published an open letter on Thursday, April 2, following the Japanese Grand Prix. The team addressed a wave of online abuse, death threats and sabotage claims that have followed its drivers across consecutive race weekends.
The statement, directed at the broader Formula 1 community, is one of the more candid public communications a team has issued mid-season. It calls out the problem plainly and asks fans to do better.
However, it did not arrive in a vacuum.
The crash that lit the fuse: Suzuka 2026
Suzuka gave the sport one of its more frightening moments of the 2026 season. During the Japanese Grand Prix, Haas driver Oliver Bearman approached Franco Colapinto’s Alpine at a closing speed of 50 km/h.
This gap was a direct result of the battery management differences between the two cars under the new 2026 regulations. Bearman struck the barrier at high speed with a 50G impact. He walked away with bruised knees.
The FIA reviewed the incident and took no further action against either driver.
The governing body did acknowledge, however, that the closing speed issue was a consequence of the new technical rules and said it would carry out a formal review in the weeks ahead.
That finding mattered. It placed the incident squarely within the context of a new regulatory framework, not driver error. Yet online, that context disappeared almost entirely.
Accusations began flooding in quickly. A section of Alpine’s fanbase, largely made up of supporters of the Argentine driver, began circulating theories that the team had sabotaged Colapinto’s car.
The claims had no foundation. But they spread regardless.
China first: how the abuse cycle started
To understand Suzuka, you have to go back to China.
On lap 32 of the Chinese Grand Prix, Esteban Ocon drove his Haas up the inside of Colapinto at Turn 2. Colapinto held his racing line. The two cars made contact. Both spun.
The stewards handed Ocon a 10-second penalty for causing the collision. Before the media had even assembled for post-race interviews, Ocon walked over to Colapinto and apologised.
“I was fighting with Franco the whole race, so that’s clearly my fault on that last incident,” he told reporters. Colapinto accepted the apology after he recovered to finish 10th, claiming his first point in Alpine colours.
What followed online was a different story entirely.
Colapinto’s management company, Bullet Sports Management, led by Jamie Campbell-Walter, posted a public plea before the abuse even began in earnest.
“Please do not send hateful messages or death threats to Esteban, his family, or the Haas team,” the company wrote. “It will not change the incident and only reflects poorly on Franco’s fandom.”
The warning did not hold. The FIA said it had reached out to both Alpine and Haas, confirming it was “deeply concerned by death threats targeting” Ocon. FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, who founded the United Against Online Abuse campaign in 2023, sent Ocon a personal letter of support.
Speaking before the Japanese Grand Prix, Ocon described the abusers as “keyboard warriors” and said their behaviour “should have big consequences.”
The Alpine F1 team acknowledged in its open letter that it had moved too slowly.
“The resulting abuse that followed was not in the spirit of the sport and was an oversight not to call it out sooner,” the team wrote.
It went further, noting that the abuse had come from a section of its own fanbase, directed at a driver who had won a Grand Prix for the team in 2021.
The open letter: Alpine F1 speaks directly to its fans
Alpine opened its statement by making the purpose plain. Having reviewed the reaction online following Japan, the team said it felt it “owed it” to fans to address what was being said, and to speak out against abuse directed not just at its own drivers but at “other members of the Formula 1 family.”
The team’s position on online behaviour was stated simply. “Social media should be a place to bring people together, share in experiences and encourage healthy debate,” Alpine wrote. It asked fans of every team to disagree “in a kind and respectful way.”
One line in the letter stood out for its deliberate framing. “This isn’t about one particular fanbase,” the team wrote. “It’s about the entire Formula One community coming together to enjoy the sport we all love and are passionate about.”
That framing was clearly intentional. Alpine was not pointing fingers at a single group. It was addressing a culture.
Sabotage claims: Alpine F1 pushes back
The second thread running through the letter was a direct rebuttal of the sabotage theories.
The speculation had gained traction after Colapinto commented publicly on his car’s performance in Japan, telling media that his front wing was “underdelivering” and that it was something the team “still needed to understand more.”
That was enough. Comments ranged from fans calling the performance gap between the two cars “abysmal” to one supporter describing Colapinto’s car as “a bicycle.”
Alpine explained what had actually happened. A gearbox problem discovered just before the Shanghai weekend had forced a small change in specification for Colapinto.
The team reverted to an older component from pre-season testing. It was a technical necessity, not a strategy. The team addressed the sabotage narrative head-on.
“Any questions about sabotage or not giving Franco the same car are completely unfounded,” Alpine wrote. It added that upgrades may sometimes arrive at one car before the other during a development push, and committed to communicating that clearly when it happens.
Alpine F1 also described, with some specificity, how its two drivers actually work. Pierre Gasly and Colapinto “regularly come to each other’s desks in the engineering office to share data and feedback,” the team wrote. There was no split garage. There were no hidden performance secrets.
What the letter leaves behind
The team noted that Enstone is pushing hard and that rival teams will not stand still. It was, in part, a rallying call. But the quieter message underneath it was harder to miss.
The passion that drives a fanbase can turn into something bitter. Alpine knows this now, if it did not know it before. Three weekends of abuse, a wave of sabotage theories, and an incident at Suzuka that could have been much worse all arrived within the space of a month.
The team responded not with anger but with a careful, firm letter that asked its supporters to look at what they were becoming.
Whether that letter changes anything remains to be seen. The next race weekend will tell its own story.
