Jack Doohan reveals what made him ‘scared’ of following his dad’s footsteps
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Jack Doohan
Jack Doohan, who finished P6 in Formula 2 this season, is one of the prime candidates to be Alpine’s reserve driver for 2023. In 2022, he had taken over many of Oscar Piastri’s duties – and so, participated in two FP1 sessions and the post-season test. If Alpine should look to their own academy, Doohan is clearly the standout (along with 2022 F3 winner Victor Martins) candidate to step into the main lineup.
As you may know, Jack is the son of 5-time 500cc (which is now known as MotoGP) world champion, Mick Doohan, and he had started racing out on motorbikes only. But that came to an end at 5 years old – if not for an incident back then, he may have been in a completely different category altogether. That incident put a little bit of fear in his mind about racing bikes.
Speaking to media including RacingNews365.com, Doohan said his first memories of racing were with two wheels, and that was all he ‘wanted to do’: “I think that he [Mick] must have been dropped on his head as a baby because it’s another breed! I did like two wheels from my first memories [of racing] that I can think of, and that’s all I wanted to do.“
But then came the accident – on his birthday no less: “Then I broke my left leg when I was five on my birthday.” Describing what actually happened to him in the accident, the Australian said: “I had a few mates over that were riding dirt bikes and I just got t-boned, unluckily, and I got a bit scared of the bike [after that].”
Jack Doohan’s father would’ve supported whatever choice he made
If not for that accident, Jack Doohan may just have been preparing for MotoGP – and not Formula 1. Of course, his dad Mick, a legend of motorbike racing, would obviously have loved to see his son follow in his footsteps, but it’s not possible now. While his dad may or may not have a preference about where he’d rather see his son compete, Doohan thinks he would have supported him in either case: “He would have supported me either direction.”
Doohan added that it was actually one of his friends from school that got him into go-karting: “It was one of my buddies at school that started go-karting, I think he brought his car around our track to go around. I was at that age where it’s cool to be doing what your friends are doing. And I was like ‘Oh, I might I might give this another crack now.'”
Time will tell if Doohan can make his F1 dream come true. The grid is very stacked right now, and both drivers at Alpine are rather young – and there to stay. If he wants to enter the sport in the near future, he may just have to look somewhere else. It won’t happen in 2023, and it’s very unlikely in 2024 as well. But not impossible.
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Aniket Tripathi
(1002 Articles Published)