Jack Doohan gets F1 lifeline as ‘grace period’ emerges

Jack Doohan’s F1 seat with Alpine will reportedly be safe until at least the summer break.

The 22-year-old Australian has been given a “grace period” until the summer, according to German publication Auto Motor und Sport.

The Race have also reported that Doohan’s future with Alpine is no longer under immediate threat.

Alpine did not comment on the reports when approached by Crash.net. 

Doohan was already fighting to keep hold of his Alpine drive before his rookie F1 season had even begun, with the team’s signing of Franco Colapinto from Williams fuelling speculation.

There was talk that Doohan had only been handed a short-term race deal with Alpine - rumoured to run until the Miami Grand Prix - featuring clauses which would enable the French squad to make a driver change in the event he underperformed.

Capturing Colapinto’s services on the eve of the 2025 campaign only ramped up the pressure on Doohan, who bit back at questions surrounding his position at the F1 75 season launch event in London.

Doohan has endured an incident-filled start to the season, suffering two heavy crashes in the opening four rounds in Australia and Japan.

Despite this, and having been outperformed by Alpine teammate Pierre Gasly, the team were encouraged by his progress at the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Doohan narrowly missed out on a place in Q3 and took his best qualifying result of 11th, before slipping back to 14th in Sunday’s race.

Gasly, meanwhile, produced a stunning weekend to take seventh and score Alpine’s first points of the year.

Jack Doohan finds support at Alpine

Alpine advisor Flavio Briatore was a key architect behind the signing of Colapinto, who he rates very highly.

The 21-year-old Argentinian has been carrying out a number of TPC tests for Alpine recently, which has done little to quieten talk that Alpine could be readying him to replace Doohan.

But Doohan does have supporters at Alpine, particularly in the shape of team principal Oliver Oakes, who has repeatedly defended his driver and insisted he will be given time to perform.

“He's done a good job this weekend, and in general,” Oakes said after Sunday’s race in Bahrain.

“I know Japan FP1 caught him out a bit. But I think this weekend, particularly throughout qualifying, Q1, the first run of Q2 - I think the last run in Q2 he is a little bit disappointed, because it was just half a 10th [to getting to Q3].

“But then in the race as well, those first two stints, he was doing a really good job. At the end there, I think it was tricky. The safety car bunched everyone up. Competitiveness-wise, it was hard with those cars around you.

“But I think he's had a good weekend.”