How a gift from Michael Schumacher and a broken leg put Jack Doohan on course to F1

Young Australian driver Jack Doohan will get his first start on a Formula 1 grid this weekend in Abu Dhabi at the final grand prix of the season.

Doohan, who signed for Alpine this year, was due to take Esteban Ocon’s spot in 2025. But the team confirmed on Monday that Doohan will get a start ahead of schedule after Ocon was released early.

Jack Doohan will make his F1 debut for Alpine next weekend.Credit: Alpine

Why four wheels and not two?

Doohan’s last name is a familiar one among motorsport fans. His father, Mick, dominated motorcycling in the 1990s, winning five straight titles from 1994 to 1998.

Given his family pedigree, it would not have been a surprise if Jack picked MotoGP over F1.

Legendary Australian driver Alan Jones, the 1980 F1 world champion, was initially surprised. “I guess, like a lot of people, I used to think maybe he would go towards the bike route,” he said.

But it was a gift from a famous friend of his father – and an accident when he was five – that put now 21-year-old Doohan on the path to racing cars instead of bikes.

Formula 1 legend Michael Schumacher and Mick Doohan are good friends, and had been neighbours in Monaco. On one visit, Schumacher gave a then three-year-old Doohan and his sister a go-kart.

“I had a kart gifted to me by Michael Schumacher because he and my dad were actually quite close friends … they were neighbours in Monaco, so I think he came out early one time to our home. We had a kart track there, so he gifted me and my sister a go-kart,” Doohan told Sky Sports.

But that alone wasn’t enough to get the youngster into racing on four wheels. It wasn’t until he was five, and broke his leg when he was T-boned while biking, that he was prompted into a rethink.

“That kind of put me off the bike, and I don’t think Dad was kind of pushing me on to it,” Doohan said.

“When I was seven, Zane Goddard, who is now in V8s, he came around, and was go-karting. And I had always go-karted from a young age because [of the gift from Schumacher].”

After that, he said, he got back into four-wheel racing, “which, obviously, I prefer, because I’m way too big and wide to be on two”.

The Piastri connection

Doohan began karting at the Lismore Kart Club in regional NSW in 2011 when he was eight. That was the same year the Melbourne-raised Oscar Piastri took up karting. The pair would regularly meet in races around the country and, in 2016, overseas, when Doohan joined the already experienced Piastri for events in Europe and in the Middle East.

Their last race together in karting was at the 2016 CIK-FIA World OK-Junior Championship in Bahrain, where Piastri finished sixth, and Doohan 23rd, the latter having fallen back after being caught up in a crash.

Happy days: Mick Doohan, a five-time world motorcycle champion, and son Jack.Credit: Getty Images

Incidentally, it was at Lismore that Doohan became best mates with now V8 Supercars star, Broc Feeney. The latter had been racing dirt bikes before watching Doohan tear up the track on four wheels, encouraging him to do the same.

By the end of 2012, Doohan’s talent was clear, finishing third in the Victorian Kart Championship. A year later, he claimed his first major title, winning the CIK Stars of Karting Series and the Queensland Kart Championship in 2014.

How did he get to Formula 1?

Doohan won local championships in 2015-16, before really making a name for himself overseas in 2017, taking third place in the FIA European Karting Championship, and finishing sixth in the prestigious FIA World Karting Championship. In 2018, he linked with the Red Bull junior F1 team, where he spent three seasons, before joining the Alpine academy.

Jack Doohan’s journey to F1

• 2011: First kart race – Lismore Kart Club
• 2012: Victorian Kart Championship – 3rd
• 2013: SKUSA SuperNationals – 4th
• 2014: CIK Stars of Karting Series Champion, Queensland Kart Champion
• 2015: Australian Kart Champion (KA Junior)
• 2016: Australian Kart Champion (KA2)
• 2017: Australian Kart Championship – Rd 2 Winner, FIA European Karting Championship – 3rd, FIA World Karting Championship – 6th
• 2018: F4 British Championship – 5th, German Formula 4 Championship – 12th, Italian Formula 4 Championship – 20th
• 2019: F3 Asian Championship – 2nd, Euroformula Open – 11th
• 2020: FIA Formula 3 Championship – 26th
• 2021: FIA Formula 3 Championship – 2nd
• 2022: FIA Formula 2 Championship – 6th
• 2023: FIA Formula 2 Championship – 3rd
• 2024: Alpine Formula 1 reserve driver
• December 2024: Formula 1 debut – Alpine F1 team

That year, he began his career in the Formula 4 division. In 2021, he was the Formula 3 runner-up and, in 2023, he finished third in Formula 2. This year he has been a full-time reserve driver for Alpine.

In August, it was revealed that Doohan would replace Esteban Ocon ahead of next year’s series opener in Melbourne, but he now has the opportunity to get a taste of top-line racing ahead of the northern winter break.

Team Alpine is delighted because Doohan is the first official graduate of its academy to land a full-time race seat in the F1 for the team. Piastri had also been in the Alpine Academy, but left in 2022 to land a spot with McLaren.

Why now?

Alpine had announced in June that Ocon would leave at the end of the season after a troubled start to the year in Formula 1 for him and the French-owned team.

The team said in a statement that the line-up change would allow Ocon to take part in post-season tests with his new team, Haas. Doohan will be Pierre Gasly’s teammate.

The 28-year-old Ocon was in 14th place in the driver’s standings. He crashed out of the Qatar Grand Prix on Sunday.

Gasly was 11th in the standings and the two Frenchmen have had a tense working relationship at times, after being friends and rivals in their junior karting days.

Ocon made his F1 debut in 2016 with Manor and joined the then Renault team for 2020. His sole career win came at the Hungarian Grand Prix in 2021 for Alpine after a crash in wet conditions took out much of the field. Ocon has three other podium finishes, including an unexpected second place at the Brazilian GP last month. Gasly placed third in a rare bright spot for the beleaguered Alpine team, which is battling with Haas for fifth place in the constructors’ championship.

Handling expectations

Thirty years after his father won the first of his five motorcycling world championships, Doohan is now the man in the spotlight. But it’s nothing new. Doohan insists he does not feel any pressure that comes with the family name.

“It’s something I’m very familiar with [from] early days in karting or racing, and in the single-seaters,” Doohan said in August when Alpine announced he would be a full-time driver next season.

“[I] very quickly found out my dad’s last name can only get me so far. I think if it was on two wheels there’d be some expectation.”

Jones said Doohan had the temperament to do well.

“He impresses me, I think he is a fine young man. He holds himself very well. He is not a big noter. He is not a show-off or anything like that. I think Mick should be really proud of him by the way he has raised him, to be honest,” he said.

And the fact Doohan would have one race this season before jumping in completely in 2025 was “fabulous”.

“It gives him an opportunity to get the butterflies out. You can test and do whatever you want, but there is nothing like an actual race,” Alan Jones said of Doohan’s debut.

“When you are on a grid waiting for those actual red lights to go out, I know they have simulators, and they have all that, but, at the end of the day, you can’t beat the real thing.”

What this means for Australian F1 racing

It’s great news, for Australia again has two drivers on the grid. Piastri has enjoyed a super year in which he has had victories at the Hungarian Grand Prix and Azerbaijan Grand Prix for McLaren.

Daniel Ricciardo’s Formula 1 career may be over, but there remains much for local fans to be excited about.

“When you look, there are 24, 25 seats and there are thousands of kids who would just break their backs to drive a Formula 1 car, let alone go in grands prix. I think it’s a fabulous effort that we have got two Aussies in there,” Jones said.

Doohan will be only the 16th Australian to start in a race.

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