Alpine’s 2025 signing Jack Doohan will take the total number of Aussies on the F1 grid to three, but what a lot of people don’t know is that the soon-to-be rookie already shares an old relationship with one of his country’s most famous drivers — Daniel Ricciardo.
Ricciardo and Doohan have a history that dates back to 2015 when the former was a young star at Red Bull. Birel ART, an Italian karting company partnered up with him, which gave birth to Ricciardo Kart, a subsidiary.
Doohan was just 12 years old then but got his hands on one of the Ricciardo Karts, and the honey badger posted a picture on his X (formerly Twitter) account.
Welcome Jack Doohan to @Ricciardokart @patrizicorse pic.twitter.com/EsudwuIAUz
— Daniel Ricciardo (@danielricciardo) January 12, 2015
A young and excited Doohan can be seen sitting on a striking yellow, blue, and white colored kart, with ‘Ricciardo’ written on the sides.
That year, Doohan won his first Australian karting championship, presumably driving his Ricciardo Kart. Almost ten years later, they could be racing against each other in the premier class of motorsports — F1.
Doohan revealed his excitement to work with Ricciardo in 2022
In 2022, Ricciardo was in the second season of his nightmare McLaren spell. Midway into the season, it was clear that he would not continue with the Woking-based team and Alpine became one of the teams interested in signing the Perth-born driver.
Doohan, who was an Alpine junior, was excited at the idea of having Ricciardo join the same team.
The then 19-year-old said to Speedcafe, “Having such a solid link then also within a driver, and not just the engineers and the team, will be really cool to hopefully be able to extract as much knowledge as I can out of him and then see what the future brings.”
Ricciardo and Doohan have been friends for several years. And while Doohan didn’t get a chance to work with Ricciardo at Alpine in 2023, he could share the grid with him in 2025 — provided the 35-year-old holds on to his RB seat.
