The Alpine F1 Team announced Friday morning that 21-year-old Australian Jack Doohan will take the team’s second Formula 1 seat for 2025, bringing to a close a whirlwind few weeks for the Enstone outfit amid speculation over who would pair Pierre Gasly. This is the path the F1 grid’s newest rookie took to achieve his F1 dreams.

By Michael McClure

Doohan, the son of five-time world motorcycling champion Mick Doohan, has been Alpine’s reserve driver during the 2024 F1 season and had taken part in free practice sessions at the Canadian and British grands prix.

The Alpine junior replaces 27-year-old Esteban Ocon, who leaves the French team after registering a win and two further podiums during his five-year stint at the French team. Doohan also reunites with new team principal Oliver Oakes, who fielded him at Hitech Grand Prix five years ago in Asian F3 and who will debut in his new role at this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort.

Doohan’s ascension to the F1 team comes off the back of two full campaigns in F2 in 2022 and 2023 that saw him take six wins for Virtuosi Racing, now Invicta Racing.

He emerged as a favourite for a 2025 Alpine drive after Ocon’s departure from the team was announced 3 June. Doohan was not the only driver in contention, with Ferrari race winner Carlos Sainz – who had driven for the team in 2017 and 2018 under its guise as Renault – reportedly also courted. Sainz eventually signed for Williams, a deal that was announced 29 July.

Doohan is the second rookie to be announced for the 2025 grid, joining current F2 sophomore and Ferrari junior Ollie Bearman, who was announced for a race seat at Haas F1 4 July. Doohan also becomes the second Australian confirmed to the F1 grid in 2025 alongside Oscar Piastri as the F1 future of countryman Daniel Ricciardo, currently at RB, remains in limbo.

Early years as a Red Bull junior

Having began his karting career in his native Australia, Doohan moved to Europe in 2017 to pursue international karting, finishing third in the OK Junior class of the FIA Karting European Championship and sixth in the same category of the FIA Karting World Championship that year.

He forwent senior karting and moved to single-seaters in 2018 as a member of the Red Bull Junior Team, which had signed him in October 2017. He competed in British F4 full-time for the RBJT–affiliated Arden, finishing fifth overall with 328 points and three wins, while entering several ADAC and Italian F4 races with Prema Theodore Racing.

He stepped up to F3 Asia for 2019 with Hitech and finished second in the points with five wins and 13 total podiums from 15 races. His sophomore season in the category, which he contested with Pinnacle Motorsport, saw him come second again with five wins and five further podiums.

But while he flourished in Asia, having also taken two podiums in the MRF Challenge F2000 series in India in early 2019, Doohan had a tougher pair of seasons in Europe. His 2019 Euroformula Open campaign with Double R Racing saw him bring home just two podiums en route to 11th in the standings, while he netted zero points in his rookie F3 season in 2020 with HWA Racelab.

Ahead of the 2021 F3 season, Doohan moved from full Red Bull Junior Team status to that of a supported athlete. His second year in the category went considerably better, however, as he netted two poles, four wins and three additional podiums while helping lead Trident to their first teams’ title in motorsport.

Move to Alpine Academy

Doohan’s strong form in 2021 reignited conversations about his F1 potential, but within the Red Bull stable – which included 2021 F3 champion Dennis Hauger and F1 hopefuls Jüri Vips and Liam Lawson in F2 – he faced stiff competition.

The Australian thus switched allegiances to the Alpine Academy for 2022, joining an F1 junior programme that had only 2021 F2 champion Oscar Piastri, a fellow Australian, ahead of him in the queue at the time.

Doohan had already impressed the F2 paddock by stepping up for the final two rounds of 2021 with MP Motorsport and qualifying second in the latter of those at Abu Dhabi, behind only Piastri.

Doohan’s 2022 campaign with Virtuosi got off to a flying start when he took pole position in Bahrain, though a torrid opening handful of rounds saw him score only five points in the first six races.

He finally got a breakthrough second-place finish from pole in the Barcelona feature race in May, and his first F2 win in the Silverstone sprint race – a masterclass in damp conditions – followed six weeks later.

Additional wins in the Hungaroring sprint race and Spa feature race helped propel him into fourth in the championship, but a string of retirements in the final three feature races, all outside of his control, stifled his ambitions of finishing higher. He ended the year sixth on 128 points, with a total of three wins, six podiums, three poles and four fastest laps.

While not in serious conversations for an F1 seat for 2023, Doohan had inadvertently jumped to first in the academy pecking order in September, when Piastri joined McLaren for the 2023 F1 season after reneging on an initially announced 2023 race seat with Alpine. Gasly eventually took the second seat in October as Piastri exited the Alpine fold.

Doohan was hotly tipped as a 2023 F2 title favourite, but a lacklustre start to the year that saw him qualify outside the top 10 in three of the first four races quickly put paid to those ambitions.

Nevertheless, the Australian driver recovered beginning with the Monaco weekend, and three feature race wins in the final five rounds – including two from pole – cemented his frontrunning status. He ended the year third on 168 points, 35 behind eventual champion Théo Pourchaire and 18 ahead of fellow Alpine junior Victor Martins, the 2022 F3 champion.

Before becoming a full-time reserve driver at Alpine in 2023, Doohan had already completed free practice outings for the team at the 2022 Mexican Grand Prix and 2022 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. He participated in free practice again at those venues in 2023. Under the testing previous cars programme, the Gold Coast native and Monaco resident had also completed private tests in old Alpine machinery, including the Alpine A522, the first of the team’s cars conforming to the current generation of F1 regulations.

Doohan will be the fifth driver born in the 2000s to race in Formula 1, joining Yuki Tsunoda, Piastri, Liam Lawson and Bearman, all onetime rivals of his. The Australian is the 17th driver from modern F2 to graduate to F1 and the 50th to do so from either F2 or its direct predecessor, the GP2 Series.

He is also the first driver from the Enstone team’s junior programme, first launched in 2002, to graduate directly to the main F1 team since Romain Grosjean stepped up to Renault’s F1 team in mid-2009 as a member of what was then known as Renault Driver Development.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency