This is the moment we’ve been waiting for all year long as the Alpine F1 Team have finally settled their 2nd seat to replace the Haas-bound Esteban Ocon today for their upcoming 2025 Formula One Season alongside Frenchman Pierre Gasly and it’s none other than our Aussie own Jack Doohan from the Gold Coast, Queensland. His big announcement today won’t impact Alpine’s future plans that much in the meantime going into the new engine rules era from 2026 at Enstone when it’s looking more and more likely now that they will ditch their own Renault engines by becoming a privateer outfit with Mercedes-Benz.
Then it remains to see what happens after that if Alpine still wants to be a Formula 1 outfit after 2026 as they could either be morphed into Hitech since Oliver Oakes has just taken over the Team Principal job at Alpine or else Andretti can take over for at least $1 billion dollars & they can finally race Formula 1 when the sport doesn’t feel confident about expansion at this time.
Great to hear that Alpine has made an excellent choice by bringing Doohan into a full-time race seat where he might not have collected a season championship so far in his career but he too can do well across qualifying and race day with a few wins under his belt as proved in Formula 3 and Formula 2 in the past. Don’t forget he’s also the son of former legendary 500cc motorcycle Grand Prix champion Mick Doohan as sure he has the family racing calibre to make his mark albeit at the different highest levels of Motorsport in four-wheels of Formula 1 rather than two-wheels which is MotoGP.
Yes, Mick Schumacher was also in the mix having also took part in a top-secret test recently for Alpine alongside Doohan where they were both family friends for a long time with Mick being named after Jack’s dad while Jack was given a go-kart by Mick’s dad Michael who won so many World Championships throughout his career as hope is all well with him following his unfortunate skiing accident a decade ago.
But again, even though Mick first came into F1 with the Formula 3 and 2 championships, he didn’t set the world alight when he was at Haas a few years ago & if he wants to go back at the top-level again, then taking the risk at Audi which is currently Sauber in the short-term under Ferrari engines would be his last best hope ahead of its big break in 2026 with fellow German Nico Hulkenberg.
At the end of the day, it’s up for Doohan to score regular Top 7-10s with some podiums or even 1-2 wins onboard since there’s only 20 Formula 1 seats to battle upfront nowadays. Let’s hope he does well with our best backing from Australia as he will be the third driver there on the grid alongside McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and also Racing Bulls’ Daniel Ricciardo if Riccardo can keep his ride within the Red Bull family next season.
Depending on Sergio Perez’s performance later this year, we could see Ricciardo going back to Red Bull again or else he will be given the flick with NZ’s Liam Lawson getting a full-time ride after all in Ricciardo’s current spot at Racing Bulls.
Looks like F1 is growing across the Trans-Tasman in both Australia and New Zealand with as many as four drivers on the grid and with Doohan, it remains to be seen which race number he could take ahead of his F1 race debut next season.
