Jack Doohan has been announced as a new member of the Alpine Academy, after leaving Red Bull’s Junior Team, the team he joined in 2017.
The Virtuosi driver, enjoyed a stellar campaign in Formula 3 in 2021, winning four times and grabbing seven podiums as he finished as vice-champion to Dennis Hauger. This was an impressive turn around following on from a difficult rookie season with HWA Racelab, where he failed to take any points.
The Australian said that a visit to the Alpine base in Enstone in October convinced him that their junior programme was the right place for him to continue his development.
Alpine have moved to bolster their academy for 2022, with fellow F2 racer Olli Caldwell, while 2022 F3 races Caio Collet and Victor Martins having both been retained. The new line-up have just finished a training camp with the academy in Tenerife.
2021 Alpine Academy duo, Oscar Piastri and Guanyu Zhou both fought for the title and have now graduated to Formula 1 roles, both drivers were heavily involved with the team behind the scenes, undertaking simulator work and testing F1 machinery.
“The option came up for me to go to Alpine for the season and I had a bit of time to think about it and to decide what was going to be the best option for me moving forward,” explained Doohan. “The academy director Mia Sharizman invited me to go to the factory in late October last year. It wasn’t a certainty for me to join the academy then, it was just to go and get a feel for it, to do some physical tests and to see how I got on in that atmosphere. Within the first day, I felt at home. The relationship and the atmosphere was just what I needed and I was very happy with the structure that they’ve got going forward.”
“We can basically go in there when we please,” said Doohan. “You have the whole team there to work with, whether that be engineers from the Formula 1 team or from the test team, so we have a huge base of knowledge that we can use going forward. I have got a really good trainer in David Thompson, who manages all things physical for us in the academy. There is on-track support as well from coaches and staff members to keep pushing us and to give us the confidence that we need to be able to get the results that they and we want, which is ultimately to win the Championship and to do as good as possible. The structure is only going to be beneficial for me going forward.”
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