Apr.11 (GMM) Two former Formula 1 drivers have blasted Alpine for putting Jack Doohan under too much pressure so early in his career.
Even before the rookie Australian turned a wheel in 2025, rumours were swirling that he was on a mere six-race contract, with Flavio Briatore planning to replace him perhaps even sooner than that with Franco Colapinto.
Team boss Oliver Oakes tried to calm the raging rumours at Suzuka, where Doohan crashed heavily, but Ralf Schumacher is not impressed.
“Sorry, but if you say you don’t want to replace Doohan, why are you letting Colapinto drive?” he told Sky Deutschland, referring to the Argentine reserve driver’s test at Monza a few days ago.
And prior to his crash, which left him visibly bruised and battered, Doohan also had to sit out initial practice at Suzuka in deference to Ryo Hirakawa.
“That’s a disaster for someone like Doohan on a new track,” Schumacher said.
“He doesn’t feel the support of the team. They could have done the same with (Pierre) Gasly in Bahrain, but they didn’t.”
Doohan, 22, insisted in Bahrain that he is 100 percent fit even though he had to be helped from his car after the Japanese GP. Former F1 driver Christian Danner partly blames Alpine for the bruising.
“If he tried that move in the simulator and for some reason it worked, then the engineer has to intervene and tell him ‘I strongly advise you not try that in the car’,” he said, referring to Doohan’s attempt to take turn 1 flat with DRS open.
“That wasn’t done,” Danner told motorsport-magazin.com. “They let him almost walk into a trap.
“One could interpret that as making Doohan’s life a little harder than it actually needs to be, in the hope that at some point they can say ‘I’m sorry, but he’s just not good enough’.”
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