{"id":7153,"date":"2025-04-10T07:12:11","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T07:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/7153\/"},"modified":"2025-04-10T07:12:11","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T07:12:11","slug":"alpine-failing-doohan-amid-colapinto-replacement-rumours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/7153\/","title":{"rendered":"Alpine failing Doohan amid Colapinto replacement rumours"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ralf Schumacher has criticised Alpine<\/a> for the way it is handling its rookie Jack Doohan<\/a>, blaming the team for the Australian\u2019s current struggles in Formula 1.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rumours that Doohan is likely to be replaced by reserve driver Franco Colapinto<\/a> surfaced even before the 2025 season began, and the first three weekends have done little to dispel that threat.<\/p>\n

Crashes in Australia and in the China sprint haven\u2019t exactly strengthened Doohan\u2019s position within the team, nor has his freak crash in FP2 at Suzuka.<\/p>\n

So, the 22-year-old remains on zero points in 2025 and Sky Germany pundit Schumacher pondered whether Doohan would even remain as Alpine\u2019s driver for this weekend\u2019s Bahrain Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

But no official announcement of his replacement has been made and it is likely that Doohan will remain in the car for Sakhir.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, Schumacher has questioned the level of support shown by Alpine and hinted that the team\u2019s advisor Flavio Briatore would prefer someone else in the car.<\/p>\n

That could pave the way for Colapinto, who was allowed to rack up mileage as part of the testing of previous car [TPC] regulation at Monza.<\/p>\n

\u201cSorry, but if you don\u2019t want to replace Doohan, why would you already let Colapinto drive [in the TPC test]?\u201d Schumacher said on the Backstage Boxengasse podcast.<\/p>\n

\"Ralf <\/p>\n

Ralf Schumacher<\/p>\n

Photo by: Andreas Beil<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all piling up,\u201d added the six-time grand prix winner, who believes Alpine isn\u2019t handling the situation well.<\/p>\n

Schumacher, who competed in F1 between 1997 and 2007, also could not understand why Alpine replaced Doohan with reserve driver Ryo Hirakawa for FP1 in Japan. Hirakawa even left Alpine immediately after the weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst they didn\u2019t let him [Doohan] drive, which is a disaster on a new track,\u201d said Schumacher. \u201cYou can tell there\u2019s no support from the team. They could\u2019ve done that with Gasly in Bahrain instead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schumacher still believes though that Doohan must take some blame for his tough start to the year, having also collected four penalty points in Shanghai for causing a collision and forcing another driver off track.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe did the same in Formula 2,\u201d said Schumacher. \u201cHe goes for gaps that aren\u2019t really there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the blame lies with the team,\u201d he added, passing the responsibility back to Alpine. \u201c[Team boss] Oliver Oakes, who I\u2019ve spoken with, feels the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schumacher hopes Doohan is able to perform in Bahrain, adding: \u201cThat\u2019s Formula 1: if he delivers a good result, then the whole debate disappears – at least for now. That should be his next goal.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this article<\/p>\n

Norman Fischer\n<\/p>\n

Formula 1\n<\/p>\n

Ralf Schumacher\n<\/p>\n

Jack Doohan\n<\/p>\n

Franco Colapinto\n<\/p>\n

Alpine\n<\/p>\n

Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics<\/p>\n

Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ralf Schumacher has criticised Alpine for the way it is handling its rookie Jack Doohan, blaming the team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4289,4293,4202,4199,707,4200,4292,4291,4290,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-7153","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-alpine","9":"tag-bahrain-gp","10":"tag-bahrain-international-circuit","11":"tag-f1","12":"tag-formula-1","13":"tag-formula1","14":"tag-franco-colapinto","15":"tag-jack-doohan","16":"tag-ralf-schumacher","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114312429283788377","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7153","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=7153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}