Aussie rising star Jack Doohan says his racing future is secure despite being unable to confirm a program for 2024.

Doohan is currently competing in his second season of Formula 2, where he’s fourth in the championship standings with one round to go in Abu Dhabi.

The 20-year-old, who is also Alpine’s Formula 1 reserve driver, has said he won’t recontest the junior series next year, with his focus switching to securing a seat on the premier-class grid.

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Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi has been replaced at the head of the French carmaker by vice-president Philippe Krief, effective immediately.

Rossi took up the CEO role in 2021 as the Formula 1 team transitioned from Renault to Alpine to increase visibility of the boutique car brand. The Frenchman will be shifted to a “special projects” role in the broader Groupe Renault.

Rossi’s hands-on reign featured the acquisition from Aston Martin of Otmar Szafnauer as team principal, but engineer Marcin Budkowski and French racing icon Alain Prost were collateral damage of his attempt to shake the team out of its midfield lethargy.

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The FIA will reconsider its parc ferme procedures following a stewards investigation into people blocking Esteban Ocon’s entry into the pit lane on the final lap of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Ocon had started the race from pit lane and run the first 50 laps on a set of hard tires hoping that a late red flag or safety car would grant his a free or cheap route into the points.

With no sign of an incident as Sergio Perez started the final lap, the Frenchman was called into he pits to concede defeat on the strategy and make his mandatory tire change.

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Pierre Gasly has accepted full responsibility for crashing his car in Q1 and ending up 19th on the grid for Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

The first qualifying segment had only just resumed from a red flag to collect Nyck de Vries’s crashed AlphaTauri car at Turn 3 when Gasly careened into the wall at the same corner, forcing another suspension.

It was a demoralising conclusion to a difficult day for the Frenchman, who set only seven laps in first practice before his car set itself alight and forced him to stop on track.

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Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi won’t rule out a reunion with Oscar Piastri despite the spectacular breakdown in relations between the French team and its former Australian junior star.

Piastri’s split with Alpine was one of last year’s major storylines. The Melburnian had been brought through the junior formulae with Enstone and was handed a reserve position with the squad last season, but he unexpectedly defected to McLaren when it became clear Woking had lost patience with Daniel Ricciardo.

Alpine attempted to hold onto Piastri, but the FIA Contract Recognition Board found that it had failed to offer him a valid deal to keep him in 2023 and unanimously sided with McLaren.

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Alpine principal Otmar Szafnauer says “superfast” Jack Doohan can get himself a Formula 1 drive if he wins this year’s Formula 2 championship.

Doohan was announced as the French team’s reserve driver this week, putting him next in line to one of its full-time race seats currently occupied by Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly.

The 20-year-old Australian will fulfil his F1 obligations alongside his second full-time campaign in F2 after finishing sixth last season. He’d previously finished runner-up in Formula 3 and Formula 3 Asia in 2021 and 2020 respectively.

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Alpine has announced Aussie rising star Jack Doohan will be the team’s official reserve driver for the 2023 Formula 1 campaign at the French marque’s season launch in London.

Doohan, 20 years old, will combine his F1 duties with a second full-time campaign in Formula 2 with Virtuosi Racing, which powered him to three wins and sixth in the drivers championship last season.

The Gold Coast native wasn’t on hand at the launch of the 2023 car due to Formula 2 testing obligations in Bahrain overnight.

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Esteban Ocon says he’s glad to see Fernando Alonso leave Alpine after having to bear more than his fair share of the load alongside the decorated Spaniard.

Alonso returned to Formula 1 after a two-year sabbatical as the French team’s star signing to replace Daniel Ricciardo. The two-time champion’s signature was considered a signal of intent that Alpine expected to maintain its forward momentum as it rebuilt itself into a race-winning force.

But hosting the notoriously prickly Spaniard hasn’t always made for smooth sailing at Enstone.

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Alpine boss Otmar Szafnauer says he’s happy that he lost the battle for Oscar Piastri’s contract because his team has ended up with a better driver line-up.

Alpine went through a public break-up with former protĂ©gĂ© Piastri when the Australian revealed in the middle of the season that he would leave the French team’s junior program to join McLaren as a full-time driver in 2023.

Szafnauer had attempted to promote his then reserve driver into the seat vacated by Fernando Alonso only to find Piastri was committed elsewhere.

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Esteban Ocon beat Sergio Perez to top sport in final practice at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix.

It was a typically straightforward Saturday practice session on a sprint weekend, with parc fermé conditions in effect after qualifying on Friday. The focus was on assessing the endurance of the soft tire ahead of the 24-lap sprint race later today.

Ocon started the hour with nine laps on the medium tire, but the yellow compound found little favor among the drivers, and he subsequently switched to a 16-lap run on the soft compound.

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The 2022 championship fight has been straightforward in every way its predecessor season wasn’t, with the racing on track largely uncontroversial and the aggro of 2021 almost entirely absent, with only the cost cap fracas briefly disturbing the peace.

But that only rings true if you look exclusively at the battle up front.

Just behind the frontrunning pack, the battle for fourth is anything but quiet.

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Aussie rising star Jack Doohan has his sights firmly set on Formula 1 after getting his first taste of a grand prix weekend in Mexico City.

Doohan took part in first practice at the Mexico City Grand Prix as the most senior member of Alpine’s junior driver academy, standing in for Esteban Ocon.

It was the culmination of his junior program with the team that has so far featured three private tests in last year’s car as well as 100 kilometres in the current Alpine for a filming day.

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Fernando Alonso topped a soaking-wet first practice session at the Japanese Grand Prix that ended with a heavy Mick Schumacher crash at the esses.

Suzuka had been drenched by showers from early in the morning, and less than half the field completed more than 10 laps in the sopping 60-minute session.

Kevin Magnussen was the first out after five minutes along with local favorite Yuki Tsunoda, but drivers were slow to brave the full-wet conditions. Only as the rain began to ease did a gaggle of cars join the circuit, in turn helping to disperse the worst of the standing water.

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Fernando Alonso has beaten Pierre Gasly to top spot in a soaking-wet final practice at the Canadian Grand Prix.

After a dry and warm Friday, Formula 1 woke up to a drenched circuit on Saturday morning. Only the wet tire would do for the first 45 minutes of FP3.

With an ambient temperature of just 53 degrees F and the track temperature barely 10 degrees higher, the blue-marked rubber was taking three to four laps to come up to temperature and deliver lap time.

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Alpine Academy driver Jack Doohan joins hosts Matt Clayton and Michael Lamonato to talk about his breakthrough Formula 2 podium finish in Spain last weekend, his maiden Formula 1 test in the 2021 Alpine in Qatar, the differences between F2 and F1 machinery, why he moved into the Alpine Academy for 2022 and how the fast rise of stars like Max Verstappen has been a game-changer for young drivers, while we wrap up last Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona.

BWT Alpine F1 Team reserve driver Oscar Piastri joins hosts Matt Clayton and Michael Lamonato to discuss the specifics of his new role, staying physically and mentally ready in case he’s called into action (04:55), how he’s satisfying his thirst for competition without racing and the lessons he’s already learned from the team’s race drivers, Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon.

Offering Aussie Formula 2 champion Oscar Piastri to McLaren as a reserve driver was a sign of goodwill from his Alpine Formula 1 team ahead of an uncertain future on the sidelines, according to Sky Sports F1 pundit Ted Kravitz.

Alpine announced during the final three days of testing that it would offer its rising star to McLaren in the event either Lando Norris or Daniel Ricciardo were unable to compete and if existing reserves Nyck de Vries, Stoffel Vandoorne and Paul di Resta were unavailable.

The announcement was unrelated to Ricciardo’s COVID diagnosis, and the McLaren driver is expected to be in the car for this weekend’s first race.

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Fernando Alonso has topped a warm final practice at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix while stewards investigations into Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen remains unresolved just hours before the sprint.

Alonso was 0.864s quicker than the under-investigation Verstappen at the top of the order, but his best lap of 1m11.238s was substantially off the pace of either session on Friday. FP2 during sprint weekends is run under parc ferme conditions, confining its usefulness to long runs rather than ultimate pace or set-up changes.

Verstappen was summoned to the stewards in the hours before final practice began for touching Lewis Hamilton’s rear wing after qualifying, an apparent breach of the FIA international sporting code, but no decision had been made before the end of practice.

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