Difficult start to the season for Alpine and Doohan: "We must improve"

Perhaps he will be freed from a burden, if the departure of Franco Colapinto for Racing Bulls becomes clearer. Since his promotion to permanent position at AlpineJack Doohan is living with the sword of Damocles hanging over his head, aware that there are now four reserves who want his place quickly. The Australian is also not putting himself in the best conditions to keep his seat with performances so far insufficient. Despite a good qualification in Australia, on home soil, the Gold Coast native made a mistake on the first lap on a wet track and ended his national event in the wall.

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In China, the pilot Alpine was once again eliminated in Q1 along with his teammate Pierre Gasly. Author of the 18th fastest time, he was condemned to skim the back of the grid and attempt an impressive comeback to save his weekend, badly started by a disastrous Sprint. Already eliminated in SQ1, Jack Doohan experienced an anonymous first Sprint race before highlighting himself in the wrong way on the last lap. By harpooning Gabriel Bortoleto, the n°7 was penalized 10 seconds and two points on his super license.

However, his ambitious maneuver did not serve as a lesson to him the next day, when he received the same sanction for a defense deemed aggressive on Isack Hadjar. I did 56 more laps than in Australia, so that's already a first positive point. smiled the Australian after the race. I think we lacked a bit of pace in general. But I gained four places and kept the Racing Bulls car behind for more than 20 laps, it was a car that was in Q3 (Hadjar was 7th on the grid, Editor’s note), so they had a good pace. So I think we have to be pretty happy with that. Obviously, I'll have to review that, because I don't want to take penalties regularly and lose two places like that."

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Doohan already has four penalty points on his super-licence

After crossing the line 14th just ahead of the Frenchman, Doohan was demoted to 16th place following the addition of his 10-second penalty to his final time. Although he moved up to 13th following Leclerc's disqualification, Hamilton and Gasly, he still hasn't been able to score his first points, both because of his mistakes and a machine with insufficient performance. “Overall, we've made some steps forward as a team through testing and the first two races, and it's clear there are still many areas where we need to improve. assures the rookie. We will continue to work hard for Japan in a few weeks and hope to score some points for the team." "Jack had a pace comparable to those around him and fought some great battles.  rejoices Oliver Oakes, the director ofAlpine. Ultimately, we lacked a bit of performance here and we need to understand why we weren't as competitive at this circuit in order to see how we can improve for the next races."

The French team is now the only one not to have scored a single point after two weekends, recalling its start to last season where it had to wait until Miami, the sixth GP, to finally Esteban Ocon unlocks his counter with a 10th place in Florida. Fifth in Shanghai, the now pilot Haas should not regret his departure when seeing the level displayed by his former team...