Alpine principal Otmar Szafnauer says “superfast” Jack Doohan can get himself a Formula 1 drive if he wins this year’s Formula 2 championship.
Doohan was announced as the French team’s reserve driver this week, putting him next in line to one of its full-time race seats currently occupied by Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly.
The 20-year-old Australian will fulfil his F1 obligations alongside his second full-time campaign in F2 after finishing sixth last season. He’d previously finished runner-up in Formula 3 and Formula 3 Asia in 2021 and 2020 respectively.
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Doohan’s junior career has been one of quiet achievement that built into broader acclaim with a strong run of form in the middle of last season. Crucial to his prospects was his 2022 switch from the Red Bull Junior Team to the Alpine talent pipeline, and he moved to the front of the academy queue when Oscar Piastri sensationally quit the French team to take up a seat at McLaren this year.
Being named as reserve driver is the biggest vote of confidence in his ability yet, and Alpine boss Szafnauer said he expected a long relationship with the young Aussie.
“He’s been part of our academy for a while now and will be in the future,” Szafnauer told Fox Sports. “Basically the reason we named him is he’s got a chance of winning the F2 championship.
“He was a little bit unlucky last year in his first year — he showed some very good promise.
“He’s talented, and he comes from a talented racing background as well. He’s a talented young man. He’s superfast.
“He’s learnt in 2022, and I look forward to him winning the F2 championship in 2023.”
Doohan was arguably significantly more than a little bit unlucky in his first full-time F2 campaign.
He had found some strong momentum following wins in back-to-back rounds in Hungary and Belgium to target second in the standings and was an outside chance of chasing down eventual runaway champion Felipe Drugovich.
But a series of unfortunate events in the final three feature races of the year cruelled his chances. He was rear-ended at the Dutch Grand Prix and sandwiched between a pair of rivals at the Italian Grand Prix, blamelessly crashing out of both after starting each from the front row.
More painful still was his sterling strategic drive in Abu Dhabi being undone by a loose wheel nut just as he looked set to deliver a grandstand victory. Instead it was another DNF, another non-score.
But the growing strength of his performances hadn’t gone unnoticed, and consensus marks him out as one of the title favourites this season — though Szafnauer admitted raw results alone wouldn’t tell the whole story.
“It would help to win the F2 championship; however, there’s a little bit of luck that goes along with that, so we’ll be watching him closely,” Szafnauer said. “And as our reserve driver he’ll be with the team at every race.
“He’s learning. He’s superfast. I’m sure he’ll with more races under his belt his racecraft will improve too, and I look forward to him winning some F2 races.”
But even if Doohan were to blitz the Formula 2 season, there would be no guarantee of an F1 drive given both Ocon and Gasly are contract until at least the end of 2024.
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He would be faced with an agonisingly similar dilemma to Oscar Piastri, the last driver to hold the Alpine reserve seat. Faced not only with contract delays but also Alpine’s lack of natural allies to accept him as an apprentice, Piastri upped stumps and moved to fierce rival McLaren.
Asked how he would prevent history from repeating itself, Szafnauer said he’d let the team’s results do the talking — and that he hoped it would send a message to former protégé Piastri.
“You’ve got to, number one, have an iron-clad contract, but number two [is] just make the team attractive,” he said. “I think we are, which is why Jack wants to be a part of our team.
“We just have to get more competitive, work hard, add performance to the car and do well on track.
“I wish Oscar good luck, but I think it’s for us to prove that he made the wrong choice.”
