Johnny Herbert believes Jack Doohan is providing Flavio Briatore with a “little bit of a headache” at Alpine because of how he has performed across the opening five rounds of the F1 season.<\/p>\n
Heading into the campaign, the rumour mill was rife with speculation the Australian had only a handful of race weekends to prove himself at Team Enstone, or risk being sidelined.<\/p>\n
Having been brought in as a test and reserve driver from Williams, Franco Colapinto was – and remains – favourite for the nod if Doohan gets jettisoned out.<\/p>\n
However, the former F1 driver and FIA steward feels the 22-year-old’s performances “haven’t been bad” so far this term and that the delta to team-mate Pierre Gasly is not as pronounced as anticipated.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s all down to Jack,” Herbert told Motorsport Week.\u00a0“What the track and what the performance is, and hopefully there aren\u2019t going to be as many mistakes coming into play.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s purely down to his performances. Actually, his performances haven\u2019t been bad, to be perfectly honest.\u00a0He hasn\u2019t been blown away by Pierre at all.\u00a0Qualifying pace is very similar.<\/p>\n
“So it\u2019s probably a little bit of a headache for Flavio [Briatore, Alpine\u2019s Executive Advisor], because I think he wanted it probably to be getting blown away,\u00a0getting completely destroyed mentally, and then he can quickly do that change.”<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tThe looming threat<\/p>\n
Nonetheless, Herbert maintains Doohan must find a way to contribute on Sundays. Five rounds into the year, he is yet to finish a grand prix higher than P13.<\/p>\n
If that does not happen, the Briton fears Alpine will make a switch, particularly given the interest surrounding Colapinto.<\/p>\n
“Qualifying, that\u2019s one thing,” the 60-year-old said. “But… the race is something that he\u2019s got to harness all the energies, the negative energies that may be there,\u00a0the positive energies that are there, and do the job in a race situation, and that will be his saviour.<\/p>\n
“If it doesn\u2019t happen, then it will be Colapinto, for sure.\u00a0Because I think Flavio is very aware that other people probably are interested.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Johnny Herbert believes Jack Doohan is providing Flavio Briatore with a “little bit of a headache” at Alpine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63705,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[859,4199,1076,1074,1077,1075,997,707,4200,998,1073,1072,1071,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-63704","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-daniel-ricciardo","9":"tag-f1","10":"tag-f1-calendar","11":"tag-f1-live","12":"tag-f1-results","13":"tag-f1-standings","14":"tag-ferrari","15":"tag-formula-1","16":"tag-formula1","17":"tag-lewis-hamilton","18":"tag-max-verstappen","19":"tag-motorsport","20":"tag-racing","21":"tag-sports","22":"tag-uk","23":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114428537989887290","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}