Hope for an imminent return to the cockpit for Jack Doohan has been quashed after the Singapore Grand Prix, were the bosses of both Alpine and Williams ruled him out as a potential full-time driving hire.
While Steven Nielsen of Alpine confirmed that Doohan remains part of the team’s program, he did admit that he is unable to make any concrete statements about Doohan’s future.
Jack Doohan: No F1 return in the cards
When it was announced that Jack Doohan would be racing for Alpine in the F1 2025 season, that news came with a caveat: The Australian’s performance was going to be regularly evaluated with an eye to replacing him with a driver from Alpine’s growing cache of reserves.
Doohan, then, was racing against a ticking clock, and his failure to score a single point in the first six races of the 2025 campaign resulted in the team replacing him with Franco Colapinto following the conclusion of the Miami Grand Prix.
The Argentine driver impressed at Williams in the latter stages of 2024, when he replaced Americans driver Logan Sargeant. But much like Doohan, Colapinto has failed to score a single point so far in 2025.
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“As part of an on-going assessment of its driver line-up, the team has made the decision to rotate one of its race seats for the next five rounds of the 2025 FIA Formula One World Championship,” the team said in a statement announcing Colapinto’s promotion to the cockpit.
However, the team has since revealed that it intends to preserve its current lineup through to the season finale.
During the team principals’ press conference on Friday of the Singapore Grand Prix weekend, Steve Nielsen — managing director of the Alpine F1 team — and Williams team principal James Vowles were asked about whether or not their teams could serve as a home for Doohan in the near future.
Both ruled out an imminent return to the F1 cockpit for the Australian driver.
“Jack is still part of our program,” Nielsen confirmed.
“He drove for us the first few races of the season. We made a change. Franco’s now in the car.
“We constantly assess our options, and as I said at the beginning, we’ll make decisions when we have to.
“But I can’t give you an update on if or when he will drive again, no.”
As things currently stand, Doohan remains a reserve driver for Alpine — and that’s in large part because a potential return to Williams has also been ruled out.
“From our side, as far as we’re aware, Jack is contracted with Alpine,” Williams boss Vowles said.
“We have our own young driver program. We’ve got Luke [Browning], who’s second in the [Formula 2] championship, and for me — as we did with Franco as well, that’s had the opportunity with Alpine — it’s about developing, really, our own internal structure and drivers.”
The goal, then, is not to fill a seat with a non-Williams driver; it is to continue curating the Williams junior driver program.
In his reserve capacity, Jack Doohan could theoretically make a return as a substitute for one of Alpine’s drivers should they need to miss a race; that seems to represent his best shot at a return to the cockpit.
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