Photo: Alpine F1
Alpine’s new Formula 1 racer Jack Doohan and reserve driver Paul Aron completed 2123 kilometres (1319 miles) of running between them at Yas Marina Circuit this month.
Doohan made his debut ahead of a full season on the grid in 2025, picking up critical experience. He did 68 laps in practice, following up on six other practice outings he has made with Alpine since 2022, then in his maiden qualifying session he was slowest in Q1 but only 0.803 seconds off the pace.
He described Friday at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix as “a very busy day”, and doing FP2 (since practice-only drivers solely contest FP1) a pleasant surprise.
“There’s a lot to understand and learn and it was good to get a lot of laps in across both sessions. FP2 was obviously new territory for me! I just tried to build up the laps and my first few runs in the second session were not the cleanest on my side but that is all part of practice.”
After qualifying, he was “of course not satisfied with the result, but it was a session of learning”. His team principal Oliver Oakes noted “that was an incredibly close qualifying today and is testament to the current level of competitiveness up and down the F1 grid” and that “we knew coming into Abu Dhabi it would be a learning weekend for Jack and he’s shown promise and grown in confidence with each session”.
Doohan finished the 57-lap race a lapped 15th. It was another result he was unhappy with but did not leave Oakes unimpressed.
“Thank you to the whole team for making the transition as smooth as possible. It was fantastic to get back racing, I have learned a lot and gained a lot of experience,” said Doohan.
Oakes added: “Jack did well today and showed promising pace, matching the cars around him on similar strategies. It’s a great learning for him to take into next year.”
Post-season testing followed, with Doohan and Formula 2 racer Aron driving for Alpine. They were eighth and ninth fastest, 0.758s and 0.765s off the pace respectively.
“It was a very long but productive day,” said Doohan, who did 137 laps. “I’m very pleased with our work, we sampled the 2025 Pirelli tyres with lots of interesting data and feedback to give. Huge credit to the mechanics and engineers who did an exceptional job today.”
“I have had a very good day in Abu Dhabi driving a F1 car for the first time,” enthused Aron. “Like every driver that drives a F1 car for the first time, I now realise just how quick these cars are and it was a lot of fun driving the A524 today. From a fitness point of view, there was a lot to get used to but, in the end, everything was fine on that front. Even with 121 laps on the board, I wanted to do more. We managed to go through our entire run plan. The engineers were happy, the pace seemed good, so I think it was a successful day overall.”