{"id":410823,"date":"2026-01-13T21:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T21:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/410823\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T21:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T21:19:08","slug":"australian-driver-jack-doohan-released-by-alpine-formula-1-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/410823\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian driver Jack Doohan released by Alpine Formula 1 team"},"content":{"rendered":"

It took Jack Doohan 13 years to earn a seat in Formula 1 and 150 days to have it taken away.<\/p>\n

The latter process has reached an inevitable conclusion with the Australian departing the Alpine Formula 1 \u200dteam to “pursue other career opportunities”.<\/p>\n

Doohan, whose father is five-time motorcycle GP champion Mick Doohan, began racing karts at 12 and was chosen to be a driver for Alpine at the start of the 2025 season.<\/p>\n

He had made his debut the previous year after being with the team in the academy, as a test driver, then reserve.<\/p>\n

However, after six races, two of which he failed to finish, Alpine dropped Doohan, replacing him with Franco Colapinto<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Doohan’s best finish was 13th at the Chinese Grand Prix \u200din March. He crashed on the first lap in the rain-hit season-opening Australian GP at Melbourne and in Miami, his last GP for Alpine.<\/p>\n

The Queenslander was still under contract but the team said it reached a “mutual agreement” that releases him for the 2026 season onwards.<\/p>\n

Alpine finished last among the 10 teams in the F1 constructors’ standings, with the switch to Colapinto not a clear success.<\/p>\n

The Argentine did not crash in the 17 grands prix he started but nor did he gain a point, with his best finish being 11th.<\/p>\n

However, he did outperform teammate Pierre Gasly, who scored all Alpine’s 22 points, six times.<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

Doohan failed to beat the Frenchman and lapped slower by approximately 0.17 to 0.50 seconds in the three races where neither driver retired.<\/p>\n

On his demotion, Alpine said Doohan was “still an integral part of the team” and he continued to work with them \u200bas \u200ba test \u200bdriver and a reserve.<\/p>\n

Doohan said at the time: “I am very proud to have achieved my lifelong ambition to be a professional Formula One driver and I will forever be grateful to the team for helping me achieve this dream.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Obviously, this latest chapter is a tough one to take because, as a professional driver, I want to be racing.”<\/p>\n

The desire to be racing, rather than testing, may well be behind his departure.<\/p>\n

At 22, Doohan is young enough to have plenty of other opportunities in motor racing, though maybe not immediately in F1.<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It took Jack Doohan 13 years to earn a seat in Formula 1 and 150 days to have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[821,64,63,217380,817,813,217379,2045,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-410823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-alpine","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-formula-1-drivers","12":"tag-f1","13":"tag-formula-1","14":"tag-formula-1-driver","15":"tag-jack-doohan","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}