Doohan vents at Alpine for causing early sprint qualifying exit

Jack Doohan vented his frustration at Alpine after being eliminated from the first part of Sprint qualifying at the Miami Grand Prix.

The Australian has been under constant scrutiny this season due to the presence of Franco Colapinto as Alpine reserve, leading team principal Oliver Oakes to reiterate that Doohan will be in the car in Imola “as it is today,” but that the team always evaluates its drivers. Those comments came before Doohan was knocked out in SQ1 having been held up in the pit lane as he was released alongside teammate Pierre Gasly, and the Australian criticized the team for putting him in such a position.

“That’s not acceptable,” Doohan initially fumed over team radio. “If you’re going to send him (Gasly) before me, you have to make sure he’s ready.

“I can’t turn out and have to turn in because he’s going to run into me. Then you put me out of Q1. That’s a joke.”

While those comments came in the immediate aftermath of missing the checkered flag and not being able to start his final timed lap, Doohan later explained the frustration was due to the issue being self-inflicted.

“It all comes down to the last flying lap and I think we were good, feeling was good, and just ended up getting blocked on my way out of the pit lane, which was a mess up because it was from the other car. So then I wasn’t able to do a final timed lap.

“That’s why they make the length of qualifying that long — you just do two laps and improve quite a lot on the second lap, and I end up as the last car out there and didn’t get a chance to do a second timed lap.

“First lap it was really, really messy, just trying a few things different from practice, and still it wasn’t too bad, and I think there was a lot more time in the car for the second lap. I guess we’ll never know though.”

Despite his anger, Doohan says the silver lining is the fact it is a Sprint weekend and he will get another chance to qualify in a better position on Saturday.

“Just try to move forward as much as possible ,” he said. “We have another shot at qualifying tomorrow afternoon. The Sprint’s gonna be a tough one; we just need to learn as much as we can from that for the main race and then focus on the main qualifying.”