Doohan data emerges after fresh track action amid Colapinto pressure
Franco Colapinto has been signed as Alpine reserve driver for the 2025 season, with Jack Doohan and Pierre Gasly in race seats.
Seemingly under pressure before a wheel has even been turned in F1 2025, Jack Doohan was back behind the wheel for Alpine at Jerez.
With Esteban Ocon swapping Alpine for Haas, Australian racer Jack Doohan was promoted from Alpine reserve into a race seat, making his grand prix debut at the F1 2024 season-finale in Abu Dhabi. However, his long-term future in the Alpine line-up is already being questioned.
Jack Doohan surpasses 100 laps in Pirelli test
Back at the Qatar Grand Prix,?PlanetF1.com’s Thomas Maher spotted?then Williams driver Franco Colapinto and his manager, Maria Catarineu of Bullet Sports Management, in conversation with Alpine executive director Flavio Briatore, at a time when Colapinto was looking to secure a place on the F1 2025 grid.
Colapinto had replaced fellow Williams academy graduate Logan Sargeant mid-season and turned heads, with five points scored in his first four grands prix, but the Williams line-up was already set, Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon both in place from F1 2025 as part of multi-year deals.
And six weeks on from that Briatore and Colapinto encounter, it was announced that the Argentine had joined Alpine as reserve driver, with Briatore failing to guarantee Doohan the full season alongside Pierre Gasly, telling Italian publication Le Parisien that: “The only thing we can be sure of is death!”
The pressure is therefore on for Doohan to hit the ground running in F1 2025, and his pre-season track running continued with a Pirelli 2026 tyre test at Jerez, where he completed a total of 113 laps at the wheel of an adapted Alpine A523.
F1 2026 will be a season of great change for Formula 1 as new chassis and power unit regulations arrive. As for the tyres, while the 18-inch wheels will remain, they are set to become narrower by 25 millimetres at the front and 30 at the rear.
Doohan was joined at Jerez by Mercedes’ George Russell, with Doohan clocking a fastest time of a 1:17.255, while Russell’s best was a 1:17.976. It must be stressed though that the drivers were on different programmes in aid of Pirelli.
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Doohan will be roared on by the home crowd at the season-opener in Melbourne, but in a major blow for the 22-year-old Aussie, ex-Williams and McLaren driver Juan Pablo Montoya believes Colapinto taking over his seat is already a done deal, with the support of Formula 1 itself.
“The difficult thing about Doohan is that from the outside it seems like the decision has already been taken,” Montoya told AS Colombia. “I think it will happen.
“I think Formula 1 saw how important [Colapinto’s popularity] is and Formula 1 in the background is already helping for that to happen.
“That is super interesting! We were talking about the opportunities at Alpine, the drivers in the academy, the drivers in F2, in F3, very good drivers!
“Franco was at Williams, in the Williams academy and suddenly has a chance to race now. Now, none of those drivers in F2 will get the seat, it will be Franco.”
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