“I’ll Make Sure It Doesn’t Happen Again”: Jack Doohan Holds Himself to Task for Abysmal Start to F1 Career

With six rookies, including Liam Lawson, making their full-time debuts on the 2025 F1 grid, a huge amount of focus was always going to be on them. Unfortunately, four of them had a terrible season opener in Australia as they crashed out of the race.

One of the four rookies who crashed out was Jack Doohan. The Australian collided with the barriers at turn six on lap one after he seemingly lost his rear while changing gears, bringing out an early safety car.

His crash and those of his fellow debutants, though, cannot be deemed rookie errors as even veterans like Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso and Williams’ Carlos Sainz crashed out after the treacherous conditions proved too much for them to manage.

Nonetheless, Doohan has stated in his post-race interview that he learned from his mistake and has vowed for it to never happen again.

“I didn’t really understand what happened, to be honest, until I got back,” the 22-year-old said while reflecting on his accident. “Just looking at it, whether it was the white line, the inters not up to temperature, it just seemed as I upshifted to fourth I lost the car”.

While such a start to a season is always going to hurt for any driver, it perhaps would have hurt Doohan more as this was his first home race. However, the Gold Coast-born driver added that he did not want to make too much of it as he believes he will have “plenty more of it (home races) to enjoy”.

That said, Doohan did claim that he learned a valuable lesson. “Lesson learned and I made sure that I spent some time with the boys to make sure that it doesn’t happen again,” he added.

With the next race of the season set to take place in just a week’s time in China, Doohan and the other rookies will indeed need to learn quickly. The 22-year-old is confident that he can bounce back strongly next week and try to target a good finish in Shanghai as he was pleased with Alpine’s “strong package” in Australia.

Pressure palpable for Doohan amid F1 debut

Doohan arguably has had one of the most pressurized starts to his rookie career as even before his season began, there have been rumors that Alpine may replace him with reserve driver Franco Colapinto, who they signed up after the 2024 season ended.

However, the young Aussie knows that this is the pressure he needs to deal with to compete at the pinnacle of motorsport and so when quizzed about it, he gave one of the calmest responses. After saying that he was not thinking too much of the rumors, he reminded the journalists during the presser that it was not just Colapinto who was after his seat.

“I think I have to perform each and every time I’m in the car, regardless of…I had one guy chasing my seat, we actually have four now…if you didn’t realize we have four reserve drivers,” Doohan added. “All four of them, not just Franco, probably want my seat, and if not Pierre’s as well”.

Other than Colapinto, Alpine also have Kush Maini, Paul Aron, and Ryo Hirakawa as reserve drivers. While Aron and Hirakawa were already in their ranks before Colapinto came in during the winter, the French team have onboarded Maini just a week before the 2025 season kicked off in Australia.