Jack Doohan’s Formula 1 career appears to be over.
In a move that would get even the ruthless hearts at Red Bull management racing, Alpine is poised to remove the Australian rookie from his seat after just seven grand prix starts.
Franco Colapinto is set to take the wheel from the upcoming Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix next weekend.
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It’s a remarkable way for Alpine to treat one of its academy drivers — the first ever promoted to one of its own seats — for which there are only two possible explanations.
The first is that Doohan’s patchy weekend in Miami was the straw that broke the camel’s back. This argument is difficult to mount, however, given he outqualified Gasly for a grand prix for the first time at the weekend and given his first-corner exit from the race clearly wasn’t his fault.
The alternative theory is that Doohan was doomed from the start — that from the moment Colapinto and his pesos became available, the Argentine was always going to trump the Australian sooner rather than later.
Because while it’s obviously true that the Queenslander was given seven rounds in total to prove himself, evidently the bar was set well above what could be expected for a perfectly reasonable rookie campaign.
Allied with team management consistently refusing to back him definitively against the backdrop of constant uncertainty about his contractual status, it looks a lot like Doohan was set up to fail, either actively or passively.
And if that’s the case, this entire exercise looks like a colossal waste of time.
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THE WRITING HAS LONG BEEN ON THE WALL
There’s rarely smoke without fire in Formula 1, and Doohan’s seat at Alpine has been rumoured to be at risk since late last year. That’s despite signing his full-time contract as recently as August.
The initial uncertainty was attributed to Alpine executive adviser Flavio Briatore’s ascension to power in a management reshuffle that saw Bruno Famin exit as team principal and Oliver Oakes installed in his place.
The timing coincided with Franco Colapinto’s sudden debut at Williams after patience ran out with Logan Sargeant.
Colapinto immediately impressed, looking quick at his first race in Monza and then scoring points at his second weekend in Azerbaijan.
But with Williams having already signed Carlos Sainz to the seat for 2025, Colapinto’s lucrative sponsor-bolstered contract — via Williams — was up for grabs.
In January Alpine agreed to take the Argentine on loan as a reserve driver.
It “represents Franco’s best chance of securing a race seat in 2025 or 2026,” Williams boss James Vowles said at the time, and he went a step further at the team’s launch event.
“I don’t mean that to the detriment of Jack — I hope Jack has a successful time — but ultimately Franco is my driver that I want back in that car.”
Speculation suggested Doohan had five or six races to prove himself, and Alpine management did the bare minimum to quell the rumours.
“I think also he should be given a bit of space to just get on with it for a few rounds,” Oakes said during the pre-season, per ESPN.
“We’re starting the season with Jack and Pierre [Gasly], and then let’s see how it all goes.”
It was hardly a ringing endorsement for a driver Alpine had nurtured for several years and who had started just one race — last year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, for which he was called up at the last minute.
At the weekend’s Miami Grand Prix Oakes was asked again about Doohan’s future after the CEO of one of Colapinto’s sponsors said he expected the Argentine to be driving at the next race.
“As it is today, Jack is our driver along with Pierre,” he said. “We’ve been pretty clear on that. We always evaluate, but today that is the case.”
That was Friday. By Sunday night the team no longer considered Doohan to be one of its drivers, with reports suggesting he was told before leaving the track that management intended to drop him.
Oakes didn’t attend his usual post-race media session, with the team saying that changed travel plans meant he no longer had time to field questions.
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HAS DOOHAN DONE THAT BADLY?
Assuming this wasn’t a done deal the moment Colapinto signed up as a reserve driver, one would have to look at Doohan’s record to try to understand why the Australian has been axed.
His short career to date is one of contrasts for which the raw stats do not do justice.
Doohan vs. Gasly
Qualifying head to head: Gasly 1-5 ahead
Qualifying differential: Gasly 4.2 places ahead
Time differential: Gasly 0.235 seconds ahead*
Race head to head: Gasly 0-2 ahead
Race differential: Gasly 4.5 places ahead
*The margin would be only 0.144 seconds if Japan, where Doohan got less than an hour of practice, were excluded.
Gasly has clearly had the upper hand as the more experienced and better established driver, but from day one Doohan has show searing speed to challenge the Frenchman.
He was quicker at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix in Q1, the only segment in which both set representative lap times, and it was a similar story in China, where Doohan was only 0.1 seconds behind Gasly.
Japan is worthy of an asterisk for Doohan’s severely disrupted build-up to the weekend, having given up his car to a reserve driver in FP1 and then crashing out of FP2. FP3 was then curtailed by a track fire.
Having never been to Suzuka before, his 0.691-second deficit is understandable in context.
In Bahrain the margin was similarly large, but Doohan also qualified a season-best 11th, missing out on his first Q3 appearance by just 0.017 seconds.
The average margin has normalised since, and Doohan outqualified Gasly for the first time for a grand prix in Miami.
His races, however, have been much patchier. He’s yet to finish higher than 14th, and twice he’s crashed out on the first lap — though only in Australia, in treacherous wet conditions, was it his fault; in Miami he had nowhere to go when he hit Liam Lawson at the first turn.
He’s one of four drivers yet to score this season, but it’s not as if he’s been leaving masses of points on the table. Gasly has scored in only one grand prix — in Bahrain, where he was in untouchable form — and pinched a point in the Miami sprint after five drivers received penalties.
If Doohan is guilty of anything in what presents as a perfectly normal opening six races for a rookie — especially for one who didn’t race at all last season — it’s for failing to so far put together one complete weekend in a headline result to silence his critics.
So far all the rookies bar perhaps Liam Lawson — who already has a decent record from previous cameos — has managed at least one big weekend.
But that’s hardly a capital crime, and anyway the Alpine car has been a far bigger problem for the team, being a much less consistent performer than expected after a promising pre-season.
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HOW DOES HIS RECORD COMPARE TO OTHER ROOKIES?
The only comparable treatment of a rookie driver is Red Bull Racing’s handling of Lawson.
The Kiwi was dropped after only two races, though he was able to be placed at Racing Bulls rather than losing his drive entirely.
Lawson’s stats painted a grim picture — far, far more dire than Doohan’s run — such that comparing the two is meaningless.
Lawson vs. Verstappen
Qualifying differential: Verstappen 15.5 places ahead
Time differential: Verstappen 1.49 seconds ahead
Race differential: Verstappen 8.0 places ahead
Isack Hadjar, his new teammate, has so far had a handle on the returning New Zealander, but the French rookie, the Formula 2 runner-up, was being soundly beaten by Yuki Tsunoda before the Japanese ace got his promotion to the senior team.
Hadjar vs. Tsunoda
Qualifying differential: Tsunoda 4.0 places ahead
Time differential: Tsunoda 0.332 seconds ahead
Race differential: Hadjar 5.0 places ahead*
*Both drivers finished only one race; Tsunoda was set to finish ahead before his front wing spontaneously failed.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli has been similarly adrift of teammate George Russell, his numbers marginally improved by his highly anticipated breakthrough.
Antonelli vs. Russell
Qualifying differential: Russell 3.5 places ahead
Time differential: Russell 0.275 seconds ahead
Race differential: Russell 3.0 places ahead
Gabriel Bortoleto is doing a better job of tackling the age and experience deficit to teammate Nico Hülkenberg, though the last-in-class Sauber isn’t a great test of a driver’s ultimate potential given its performance limitations.
Bortoleto vs. Hülkenberg
Qualifying differential: Hülkenberg 1.17 places ahead
Time differential: Hülkenberg 0.146 seconds ahead
Race differential: Hülkenberg 1.67 places ahead
Oliver Bearman is the only rookie regularly challenging his teammate, being a close match for Esteban Ocon in most sessions, albeit both have lacked consistency in the first quarter of this season.
Bearman vs. Ocon
Qualifying differential: Ocon 2.9 places ahead
Time differential: Ocon 0.089 seconds ahead
Race differential: Bearman 0.6 places ahead
Doohan’s statistics rank him on the bottom half of this list, somewhere alongside Hadjar’s record against Tsunoda.
Hadjar’s reputation has been burnished by his form against the bruised Lawson. He’s now considered one of the field’s better rookies.
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NO WAY TO TREAT A JUNIOR DRIVER
Adding salt to the wounds is that on paper Colapinto isn’t a clear step forward in performance.
They’re now similarly experienced. Each is figured to be roughly as quick as the other, and while Colapinto impressed by scoring twice in his first four races with Williams last year, he was still outscored by Albon during the same stretch of grands prix.
Colapinto vs. Albon, 2024
Qualifying head to head: Albon 2-7 ahead
Qualifying differential: Albon 3.3 places ahead
Time differential: Albon 0.119 seconds ahead
Race head to head: Albon 1-2 ahead
Race differential: Colapinto 0.7 places ahead
Colapinto’s slim race advantage is heavily swayed by Albon picking up floor damage that left him a lap down at last year’s United States Grand Prix, one of just three races both finished.
If Doohan’s crash record is to be used against him, Colapinto’s multimillion-dollar record of carnage must surely be considered too.
He crashed twice in Brazil — in qualifying and the race — contributing to a repair bill that exceeded US$3 million (A$4.65 million). After the team worked heroically to repair his car in time to make the Las Vegas Grand Prix, he crashed again in qualifying, clipping an apex barrier in what could well be the definition of a rookie mistake.
Of course Colapinto’s reportedly hefty sponsorship backing sways the argument in his favour. This is no criticism of him — he’s clearly quick enough to warrant a spot on the grid regardless of any cash he brings — but in a situation where a team can choose between two roughly equal drivers, money is as good a differentiating factor as any.
Doohan, having risen through the expensive junior ranks, would recognise that.
Rumours last year suggested Colapinto’s sponsors were bringing as much as US$500,000 ($775,000) per race to Williams last season.
Italy’s Gazzetta dello Sport reported earlier this year that Williams received €20 million ($35 million) in exchange for Colapinto’s contract on loan, which could last for three seasons or more.
What must sting, however, is the fact that Doohan is a product of Alpine’s driver academy. He was convinced to sit on the sidelines last year to lean into the reserve role rather than pursue a racing seat elsewhere, and he contributed to the team’s form upswing last year via his work in the simulator, a role for which he earnt high praise from former principal Bruno Famin.
More baffling still is that Alpine has already spent millions on Doohan — on his development, on his private testing program in 2024, on his race contract this year.
Formula 1 is a performance business with little room for sentiment, but it’s regardless a remarkably poor way to treat a homegrown driver and particularly the first in-house prospect to earn a debut for the team, having seen Oscar Piastri and Zhou Guanyu make their debuts elsewhere.
Doohan has kept his chin up throughout this strange ordeal. Undoubtedly he will continue to do so, with a continuing role at Alpine rumoured.
He’ll need to as well, with few seats out of contract next season. Cadillac, which joins the grid in 2026, could present as a refuge, though the team is believed to already be deep in talks with Sergio Pérez about a comeback and has hinted that experience could be more important than youth in its early years.
If Alpine does pull — or already has pulled — the trigger, Doohan’s Formula 1 prospects would be uncertain at best.
And that would be a cruel end to a career that had barely had the chance to get started.