Alpine have confirmed they will promote reserve driver Jack Doohan to their race team next year.
Doohan’s opportunity to make his Formula 1 debut arose after the team and Esteban Ocon decided to part ways at the end of 2024.Doohan will turn 22 just before the start of the 2025 championship, and is to partner Pierre Gasly as Alpine’s second driver.
The team’s newest driver previously raced in Formula 2. He ended the 2023 season, his second full year in the category, third in the drivers’ standings.
As part of the Alpine driver academy, Doohan has made six appearances in Friday practice sessions with the team since 2022, including twice this season at the Canadian and British Grands Prix. However he had no racing programme this year.
He is the second rookie to have been confirmed 2025 grid, joining Oliver Bearman who made a single start for Ferrari earlier this year and will start his first full season for Haas. Doohan is also the second Australian driver to be confirmed to be racing in Formula 1 next season, alongside McLaren’s Oscar Piastri.
New Alpine team principal Oliver Oakes said the team were “very excited” to promote Doohan into a race seat for 2025.
“Jack will become the first driver to graduate from the Alpine Academy into a race driver position with the team, so that is exceptionally pleasing for the team and its young driver pathway,” said Oakes.
“Personally, I have worked with Jack back in 2019 and I am fully aware of his raw talent and potential. He is a very hard worker behind the scenes and his commitment is hugely valued by the entire team. Alongside Pierre, we have a well-balanced driver line-up with a good combination between youthful energy, experience, and pure speed. We look forward to working with both Jack and Pierre in order to keep developing the car and bring the team up the grid.”
Doohan said he was “very grateful for the trust and belief” shown to him by the team.
“There is so much work ahead to be prepared and ready and I will give my best in the meantime to absorb as much information and knowledge to be ready for the step up,” said Doohan.
“It’s exceptionally satisfying to be the first graduate of the Alpine Academy to be in a race seat with the team and I’m extremely thankful to those who supported me along the way to make this a reality. It’s an exciting moment, a proud day for my family, and I look forward to taking it all in and pushing hard behind the scenes.”
Doohan, who is the son of five-times Moto GP world champion Mick Doohan, was previously a member of the Red Bull junior team. He left the programme at the end of the 2020 season.
After finishing third in the 2021 Formula 3 championship, Doohan became a part of the Alpine academy, taking six race wins over two seasons in Formula 2.
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MacLeod (@macleod)
23rd August 2024, 8:23
As it should the guy was reserve driver for 3-4 years……
montreal95 (@montreal95)
23rd August 2024, 11:36
1.5 years so far. Maybe you’re thinking of Drugovich?
But yeah well deserved.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
23rd August 2024, 8:28
I was in a race with him on iRacing only last wednesday!
Jere (@jerejj)
23rd August 2024, 9:29
Good coincidence
Pete
23rd August 2024, 10:36
Did you beat him? It might be worth letting Flavio know if so as there may be a cooling-off period on the contract….
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
23rd August 2024, 10:52
I didn’t. But I did beat Antonelli a couple of months ago because he crashed out :P
Nulla Pax (@nullapax)
23rd August 2024, 8:58
I really don’t know anything about the guy, which makes me even happier to see him get a seat.
I love to see new faces/fresh blood in F1 and wish him all the best :)
MichaelN
23rd August 2024, 9:25
For sure, it’s great to see. Hope he does well.
Red Andy (@red-andy)
23rd August 2024, 9:31
No disrespect to Jack, who seems like a sensible choice, but it does make you wonder what F2 is for these days.
It’s very rare now that a driver makes the step up to F1 purely on the strength of their F2 performances – most of them have been part of F1 driver academies well before arriving in F2, and their actual results in the category don’t seem to matter much in the decision to eventually promote them (providing they do well enough to get a superlicence of course). When you have drivers like Doohan and Bearman heading up to F1 while actual champions like Pourchaire and Drugovich miss out, it’s hard to sustain an argument that F2 is about identifying the best junior drivers so they can have a chance in F1.
I suppose you could argue Piastri was one example, as Alpine dithered over whether to promote him and ended up losing him to McLaren, but most of the other recent F2 hires have been “academy hires” rather than picking the best drivers out of the category.
oweng (@oweng)
23rd August 2024, 10:10
The issue for some of them could simply be timing. Wasn’t Pourchaire a Sauber academy driver but Zhou was still relatively new to the seat so binning him for Pourchaire would have been harsh.
And another thing that fans aren’t privvy to is performance during tests when it comes to working with the engineers and car feedback etc. An F2 champ may be the best in that car that season, but when it comes to the step up maybe others are better suited to the F1 car.
It would be great to see more young drivers get an opportunity of some sort though. Adding teams to the grid might help with that. With only 20 drives how often does a seat open up for F2 champions?
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
23rd August 2024, 11:42
F2 needs to crown its champion when there are still some F1 drives left, not three months later!
Red Andy (@red-andy)
23rd August 2024, 11:54
That is definitely an issue, not just for the champion but for anyone who needs F2 superlicence points to qualify for F1.
GT Racer (@gt-racer)
23rd August 2024, 13:45
@bullfrog The F2 championship been decided earlier wouldn’t make any difference as the F1 teams aren’t looking purely at the results. You could have the F2 champion crowned 6 months earlier & the champion would be no more likely to get an F1 seat as he is now because that isn’t what F1 teams are looking at.
They have a lot of data & are looking more at pace, consistency, race craft & a drivers ability to give clear feedback and you can pick those things up by half season & in a lot of cases actually from prior junior category running so all your looking for in F2 is if a driver is progressing at the pace you expect based on what you saw of them in F3, F4 etc…
And if a driver is part of an F1 teams young driver program then obviously they can get him on the simulator & maybe give them a run in an old car which often gives them far more valuable data than watching what they do in F2. Hence why you have drivers like Oliver Bearman given opportunities despite results in F2 been rather mixed.
montreal95 (@montreal95)
23rd August 2024, 11:55
But that’s the thing. In order to know the level of his, or Bearman’s or Antonelli’s or anyone’s junior series performances you need to dig much deeper than just look at the standings. Doohan’s junior career is much better than his results suggest. Doohan’s 2023 is a great example: he did half a season with a damaged chassis. As soon as it was changed, he dominated the rest of the season rising to p3 from outside the top 10. Yeah Pourchaire won, but it was his 3rd season and he only won 1 race. Doohan was more impressive than him arguably and it was just his 2nd season.
Of course academy affiliation is very important but you also need to perform and to impress. That’s why Bearman’s considered Ferrari’s future in the way Swartzman and Mick never were. People dwell on Saudi and label him the new de Vries, but the fact is he was likely to get a promotion to haas regardless on the back of his fantastic rookie F2 season but also and more importantly because he greatly impressed Haas ever since his first Friday practice in Mexico 2023.
To sum up, we could have 4 rookies on the grid next year including Lawson, none of which are F2 champions. You could say well what’s F2 is for then? Or you could look deeper and conclude that their impressive F2 performances have contributed to this result even if they weren’t champions there because ultimately it’s a junior championship and not the title is what matters but the platform to impress and rise to the top.
Finally I’ll bring up another sport comparison. In football youth academy teams are not valued by how many championships they won in the youth league but by how many top league professional players it produced. The academy I used to play for until age 17 is considered one of the best in my home country even though they only ever won 2 top youth league titles. But it contributed over 20 players to the national team and countless more turned professionals. Sadly I wasn’t one of them :)
Nick T.
23rd August 2024, 13:53
Great info. This is one of my pet peeves. There’s usually so much more behind driver stats than even someone who watched all the races might know about and F1 media generally does a really poor job digging into the many factors that led to a driver (be they in F1, F2, F3, etc.) looking better or worse than the stats, hype, etc. seem to indicate. It’s a particularly inexcusable since there are hundreds of articles about nonsense each year in every F1 publication.
Shimks (@shimks)
23rd August 2024, 16:38
Excellent comments. Thanks, @montreal95.
Jere (@jerejj)
23rd August 2024, 9:32
Finally, this open secret became official, as his promotion to a full-time drive had been all but confirmed since Sainz’s Williams move announcement.
Also, good that Alpine/Renault finally gives a chance to a driver whose career they’ve invested in, especially after what happened with Piastri.
Ankita
23rd August 2024, 9:42
Could it be that winning a championship does not necessarily show your worth as a driver ? Ocon beat Verstappen in the championship of junior categories and there is a whole world of talent that separates them.
bernasaurus (@bernasaurus)
23rd August 2024, 11:37
Max did make some mistakes in 14′. *Still does now. But I think he had twice as many DNFs, he lost poles to mechanical failures and critically Esteban was in the Prema. Though Ocon got the title, just like you say there was / is a talent gap.
Which sort of feeds into Pourchaire’s situation. Yes, he won. But who they won against and how they win, kind of matters more. Hakkinen & Schumacher went head to head in F3. One of them had to lose. But thankfully both could still go to F1.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
23rd August 2024, 15:34
I would say this is true also in f1, winning one or more championships doesn’t mean a lot if the car is dominant and team mate is mediocre, is still means you might be a top driver if you dominate said team mate, but it doesn’t mean you will be better than drivers who won less titles and never had dominant cars, I think the vettel vs alonso comparison is a good example.
oweng (@oweng)
23rd August 2024, 10:06
Great to see new young drivers coming into F1. Could have 4 full season rookies on the grid next year now if Antonelli and Lawson get drives.
Ambrogio Isgro
23rd August 2024, 10:57
So new drivers are finally coming in F1: Bearman, Doohan, Antonelli and Lawson.
In the next 2-3 years probably Alonso, Hamilton and Hulkenberg will retire and more new Blood Will get seats.
Dex
23rd August 2024, 11:13
And none of them really made it in F2. It shouldn’t even matter, since it’s basically a racing school, with reverse grids that make it less fair in a way, but it is ironic. Most F2 champions are completely on the sidelines, Piastri and Schumacher being last ones to get their chance.
Those guys you named get in, before them Tsunoda, Zhou, Albon, Mazepin, Gasly, Latifi and so on.
Neil (@neilosjames)
23rd August 2024, 11:12
Always assumed he was but never bothered to check.
Wonder how many different sports’ champions have produced F1-driving children? I can think of:
F1 (Hill, Rosberg, Schumacher etc)
Rallying (Sainz)
MotoGP/GP Motorcycle racing (Doohan)
Indycar (Andretti)
Snowmobile Derby (Villeneuve)
Anyone know of any others?
Dex
23rd August 2024, 11:17
There are more, but this is not a massive (in participation) sport, so I don’t find it particularly curious. It’s a relatively closed circle, and money and nepotism are the main deciding factors (or being a Verstappen, who is ironically also one of those sons).
We’ll be seeing more of that in the future, I’m sure.
SteveP
23rd August 2024, 11:58
I don’t think you need the OR in that.
Based on the RBR record with “disposable” drivers, I suspect that without Jos in the garage Max’s crash regularity in the early seasons would not have been tolerated, and he would have been shown the door.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
23rd August 2024, 15:39
There’s absolutely no way that would’ve happen, red bull even back in the earlier days always had the opinion that speed HAD to be there, then mistakes would probably be fixed with more experience, and even in 2018, when verstappen made most mistakes, he was still pretty damn fast.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
23rd August 2024, 15:40
would’ve happened*
JA
23rd August 2024, 12:43
Piquet.
Nakajima, Super Formula champion.
Magnussen, GTS and GT1 champion.
Verstappen, LMP2 champion.
Bianchi (grandfather), P1.6 champion (Le Mans). His brother drove with Mario Andretti. Lucien, the brother, won in another class the following year.
Fittipaldi (grandfather).
.
JA
23rd August 2024, 12:48
Forgot Brabham.
SteveP
23rd August 2024, 13:48
Anyone noted who Doohan’s manager is, and what advice he might have offered to team principal Oakes?
EffWunFan (@cairnsfella)
25th August 2024, 6:37
That is rather amusing. Being brought in to offer advice to such areas as “what drivers to hire”, and then “ohh…. just a moment…. you know what…. you’ll laugh as I almost forgot, but there is this guy I happen to manage”.