Jack Doohan’s career was on a meteoric rise during the summer of 2022 – and it was well timed, too. With the Alpine Formula 1 team embroiled in contractual wrangles with Oscar Piastri, and with Fernando Alonso having announced his departure to Aston Martin, the French team had a spare seat.
The Australian looked in prime position to take it. The 2021 F3 runner-up stunned in his rookie F2 season with Virtuosi, taking three wins and a further three podiums, as Doohan appeared to be in exactly the right place at the right time, putting in stellar performances while also continuing his work behind the scenes with Alpine.
Though Pierre Gasly eventually took that vacant seat, Doohan had looked like a star in the making. That was, until, his fortunes began to turn. A poor run of form meant he fell from fourth in the F2 standings to sixth come the end of the season, a result which betrayed his strong form for much of the year. The start of 2023 only continued that bad run, suffering a “fundamental issue” with his Virtuosi-run car which created his “worst nightmare.”
Speaking to Autosport at Monza, Doohan believes his driving has been better in 2023 than last year, having made “steps forward in my maturity, my outlook, and preparation in all areas". But, he adds: “I'd say still starting the season, and for the next four rounds, I had something that was outside of my control, a fundamental issue, and that wasn't helping me move on from the dramas that I had at the end of last season.
“So that was quite tough. And we were able to solve the issue in Barcelona, but I still hadn't processed and been able to move forward from that eight rounds of things not going necessarily my way. I'd say the end of 2022 was unfortunate, just technical failures, but the start of this year was something fundamentally wrong with the car and I just had no speed.”
He says the difference in the car was “massive – a completely different world,” adding: “I wasn't getting any feeling of the car. When I was braking, deceleration, it wasn't doing what it was supposed to do. So then it wasn't loaded properly for any turns, for any high speed, medium speed, slow speed.”
Though the team is still trying to understand the issue, a huge breakthrough came at the Barcelona in-season test in May, allowing Doohan to return to his previous set-up and driving style – “I was able to completely reset.”
Source: Autosport