Jack Doohan Alpine F1 2025 signing a vindication of often-overlooked F1 area

Jack Doohan will step up to a race seat from a reserve spot with Alpine next season, and while it is a refreshing sign to see another rookie on the F1 2025 grid, there is another statistic to bear in mind here.

When Doohan makes the jump to F1 next year, he will be only the third driver in seven seasons to step up to the team for which they served as a junior driver, straight into their ‘senior’ seat without serving elsewhere – after Lando Norris at McLaren in 2019 and Logan Sargeant at Williams last year.

Jack Doohan Alpine F1 2025 promotion a sign of a team trusting own talent

This points not only to a sign that a team is willing to take a leap of faith with their own junior driver – and there may be another one yet if Andrea Kimi Antonelli joins Mercedes next season – but the reluctance to do so in recent years overall has seen others go on loan, to other series or stick on the sidelines.

You only have to look at the likes of Felipe Drugovich and Théo Pourchaire, both Formula 2 champions but both unable to force their way onto the F1 grid, as examples of highly talented drivers who have been unable to find themselves in the right place at the right time, left in something of a limbo as a result.

Of course, from the outside, the easy solution here is to say there should be more cars on the grid to compensate for this – and it is – but this isn’t the time to open that particular can of worms.

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Instead, while Alpine appeared to have options in front of them for the F1 2025 season, their show of faith in Doohan is one that should give hope to those on the sidelines that, in the right circumstances, they can make the jump from the reserve driver role.

Of course, ‘in the right circumstances’ does mean an awful lot of things have to fall into place there, primarily a seat being free, doing the best job possible in an era of limited testing and showing those at the team you are worthy of a shot at the big time.

Doohan has had that opportunity in TPC [testing of previous car] runs and tyre testing this year for Alpine, and under new team principal Oliver Oakes they will have a rookie driver for next season and a team boss in his first full season in the top tier, alongside a now-experienced lead driver in Pierre Gasly.

Like Haas with Oliver Bearman, Alpine deserve credit for trusting youth after an unprecedented year in which no seats changed hands between the end of 2023 and the start of F1 2024.

While Bearman is a Ferrari junior, Doohan has come to Formula 1 as an Alpine junior after two years in their youth ranks, following a stint at Red Bull.

Unlike Red Bull, though, the long-standing breeding ground for junior talent on the Formula 1 grid, Alpine do not have a second team as a place to make mistakes before a jump up to the ‘senior’ seat, so a one-year deal makes sense from their perspective, giving the 21-year-old a chance to shine while keeping their options open on the driver market.

In any case, though, it is a positive sign for Formula 1 that a team has been willing to trust its own junior talent.

The rest is up to Doohan to make it work next season.

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