Franco Colapinto spoke directly to his own fanbase this week after months of pile-ons aimed at his teammate, his rivals and the people he works with inside Alpine.

“I know you think you’re defending me, but you’re doing the opposite. You’re not helping me or my future,” the Argentine said in a video on his social media on 14 October.

The 23-year-old also indicated he would step back from the platforms himself to concentrate on racing. His message was in Spanish, posted to supporters who have followed him from Formula 2 into a full Alpine seat in 2026.

“Sometimes we cross the line. Instead of supporting me, we end up criticising, we end up attacking other drivers, other colleagues, my teammates, my mechanics, my engineers,” Colapinto said in the clip.

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He asked his audience for one specific thing: to help him end it.

The Baku crash that pulled Norris in

The most recent flashpoint came in Baku, where Colapinto locked up at a safety-car restart, slid into Pierre Gasly’s Alpine and sent both cars into Lando Norris’s McLaren. All three retired.

Norris initially suggested the move warranted a race ban for Colapinto, then apologised publicly after the Argentine’s followers turned on him online.

Colapinto addressed that specific episode with sympathy for the McLaren driver.

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“I think he was in the heat of the moment. He knows what comments create, because he suffered from it,” he said of Norris.

He also used the moment to describe the pattern more broadly.

“My message is always the same: that they sometimes don’t realise what you can create by writing in your keyboard, and that we are humans, and it’s not easy for us when we get these kind of things,” Colapinto said.

Madrid, Zandvoort and the Doohan precedent

Baku was not the first race to trigger it. Earlier in the season, supporters turned on Gasly after the Madrid round, where the Frenchman was not asked to yield to Colapinto on a differing pit strategy. Zandvoort brought another wave after Colapinto picked up yellow-flag penalties.

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Alpine’s Flavio Briatore had already warned publicly that the abuse of Gasly, in particular, could not continue. Jack Doohan, whose seat Colapinto took early in 2026, had revealed receiving death threats during his short stint in the car.

Colapinto’s own teammates and staff have, by his account, been swept into the same cycle. His closing ask was for his fans to redirect their energy.

“We have to try to improve as a society, and to help me have a better performance, to help me keep chasing my dream, I need you all to help me stop this together,” he said.

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