Jack Doohan’s route to Formula 1 with Alpine

One of motorsport’s most storied surnames will make its mark on Formula 1 next season: one that achieved remarkable success on two wheels in the 1990s, and one that now wishes to indulge in similar fortunes on four.

Jack Doohan has been rewarded for his service as Alpine’s reserve driver, earning his elevation to a full-time race seat alongside Pierre Gasly. The son of five-time 500cc grand prix motorcycling world champion Mick, Doohan the Younger will seek to replicate those triumphs in the battleground of F1, having eschewed following his father’s footsteps in a career racing bikes. 

Doohan told Autosport back in 2022 that a leg break on a bike as a child rather corralled him away from a life on two wheels, conceding that the pressure of the family name in the motorcycling arena would have reached its zenith. Sure, while Mick drove an F1 car in 1998, a Winfield-liveried version of the 1997 Williams FW19, the Doohan name has little skin in the game on four wheels. A new Doohan legacy can be created, then, as long as Jack can perform in F1.

Of some amusement to the F1 fanbase was that Alpine had finally snared an Australian hotshot from its junior set-up, after its spectacular fumble of Oscar Piastri in the tail-end of 2022. There could even be three Australians on the grid should Daniel Ricciardo stick around for 2025, the most in one race since Alan Jones, Larry Perkins and Warwick Brown all raced in the 1976 US Grand Prix.

Angling for a career in cars, Doohan became an Australian karting champion and then moved to the UK to race in the British F4 championship in 2018, having become part of Red Bull’s junior programme. After missing out on fourth in the championship to fellow Red Bull stablemate Dennis Hauger – the Norwegian also getting his first experience of the cast of British circuits on the bill – Doohan nonetheless beat Hauger to the Rookie Cup.

The following year, Doohan linked up with current Alpine team principal Oliver Oakes to race for Hitech in the Asian F3 championship, claiming the runner-up spot in the standings to Ukyo Sasahara, dovetailing that with a year in Euroformula Open – although results in the F3-grade series were less impressive.

Jack Doohan, HWA Racelab

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

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