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 Motorsport.com 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. And 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.
A step up to the FIA Formula 3 championship in 2020 with HWA was unsuccessful, yielding zero points in a trying season; in the 30-car grids with little experience of the format, Doohan often became lost within the labyrinthine environs of the midfield and was unable to break into the top 10 even once. And, although Red Bull's support did not visually extend beyond his crash helmet - a red-white-blue evocation of his father's Australian flag-inspired lid - it helped Doohan break into a far more competitive entity with Trident.
With Maurizio Salvadori's squad, Doohan excelled in his second year of F3. A season-long championship battle against former sparring partner Hauger started to build up to a final crescendo in Sochi, where Doohan helped his chances with pole for the Sunday full-points feature race. In the opening sprint, however, he slid down the order from his reversed-grid starting berth of 12th, and his inability to break into the points - while Hauger finished second - ensured that he missed out on keeping the title fight alive. This was compounded by the cancellation of the second sprint due to heavy rain, although Doohan converted his pole in the season finale - and showed a ruthless streak by defying team orders to let team-mate Clement Novalak through. Regardless, his win helped Trident secure the teams' title.
Sensing that opportunities with Red Bull might have reached their limit, Doohan extricated himself from Helmut Marko's watchful gaze and joined the Alpine Academy for 2022. Although Alpine's track record with juniors had perhaps been less heralded compared to Red Bull, Doohan had just Piastri ahead of him in the pecking order with his off-track movements, and linked up with the Virtuosi Formula 2 squad that had finished second in the previous year's championship.
There, he took three wins en route to sixth in that year's championship; although he'd planned to do just one full season in F1's junior category (having done six races at the tail-end of 2021 with MP) he stuck around for a second with the intent of making a championship challenge.
Although Doohan had rallied in the middle period of 2022, a slow start to the year ensured that he only picked up six points in the opening six races, and a disappointing end yielded three retirements in the final three feature races of the year; he was dumped into a spin at Zandvoort by Clement Novalak during a badly controlled safety car restart, suffered an electronics issue in the Monza feature's formation lap while set to start from pole, and then looked set to make an alternate strategy work in the Yas Marina finale before his wheel came off moments after his pitstop. That's more than anyone's fair share of misfortune.
Problem was, 2023 didn't start particularly auspiciously either. A "fundamental issue" with his car meant that Doohan could not gather a foothold into that year's championship battle, and he was only 13th in the points after the Monaco round. Although results picked up over the second half of the year to grease his path into third overall in the standings, the title duel between Theo Pourchaire and Frederik Vesti was already out of reach.
But it's Doohan, not Pourchaire or Vesti, who earns the step up to F1. The Alpine reserve role has granted the Queenslander a chance to impress the team with FP1 outings and testing of old cars, essentially the programme that Piastri had used as a springboard for his own F1 career. Doohan had first experienced contemporary F1 machinery in Mexico 2022's FP1 session, fulfilling the same duties in Abu Dhabi ahead of a longer run in the end-of-season young driver test. He participated in the same practice sessions a year later, peaking with 13th in the Yas Marina FP1 session (albeit one populated by a handful of 'rookie' drivers).
This year, Doohan has already assumed FP1 duties in Canada and at Silverstone, although running in the former was nixed by poor weather pervading the Montreal circuit. Nonetheless, there will be further chances for Alpine to prepare Doohan over the rest of the season to ensure he has the best chance in 2025 to deliver; over 2024, he has had 10 days booked in to run with older machinery: one day in Alpine's A521 from 2021, and the A522 raced in the 2022 season in the following nine. He'd also been considered for a role with Alpine's World Endurance Championship team, but went no further than speculative discussions as he was unable to focus fully on his F1 support role.
Although Carlos Sainz may have been Alpine's first choice for 2025, the announcement of the Spaniard's move to Williams for next season forced the French team to look elsewhere. It had been known that it was assessing Doohan for a step up and had also put its WEC driver - and Mercedes reserve - Mick Schumacher through his paces. Both names are saturated in star quality, but Doohan's work over the past two years has shown the team that he has what it takes to make the move into F1.
In Gasly, the Australian has a well-known benchmark. The Frenchman is a grand prix winner, and is a driver who is known to be a fast and astute racer. Gasly also knows how to work with a rookie team-mate, having served as Yuki Tsunoda's mentor at AlphaTauri when the Japanese driver joined the ranks as a Red Bull fledgling. Regardless, Doohan will take time to hit the ground running with a year out of racing, a less felicitous circumstance that Piastri experienced in 2023 after a full year spent in a reserve role.
Oakes and Flavio Briatore will expect Doohan to perform, but also recognise in their careers handling younger drivers that they will require time to mature. And, with the team in a current state of flux, Doohan may be able to benefit from a low-risk environment to cut his teeth in the high-pressure surroundings of Formula 1.
