Alpine admits caution needed on spares after Doohan’s Melbourne crash

Australian rookie Formula 1 driver Jack Doohan crashed out of the season-opener in Melbourne on the first lap, a less-than-ideal start to his full-time racing career in F1. 

The Alpine driver wasn’t alone, though, as the wet weather at Albert Park caused chaos. Six drivers retired from the race, four of whom were rookies. 

Aside from not collecting points that weekend, another challenge has reared its head in the shape of spare parts after the hefty shunt. While speaking to the media, including Motorsport.com, Alpine racing director Dave Greenwood explained:

“[It’s] always challenging [at] this point of the season, but you know, we have the right amount of spares we need in the garage to go racing this weekend. We will need to be a little bit more cautious than normal, but nothing that should affect the drivers.”

Doohan has taken responsibility for the crash, stating:

“Yeah, I think next time I’ll certainly do exactly what I was doing on the lap to the grid, which was short shifting already before turn 3, so I was in 3rd gear, you know, as I was just puttering around and at a part throttle, 80%, I shifted to 4th gear and just lost it on the gear shift, so I think we’ll also just match the other side of the garage as well on our upshift harshness.

“Because I think, because I straightened the wheel, which essentially should be the good thing, but that also meant that we went to max harshness on the upshift, which spun me. No excuses at all, but yeah for me, I’ll just be even more cautious, make sure that I upshift before the corner,” he continued. 

“At the end of the day, I stuffed up, let’s not get too in the deep on anything. I’m in control, but for sure, maybe things weren’t helping me in the best way, but you know I live and learn. I’ll definitely be either lighter on the throttle at a lower percentage and upshift a bit earlier.”

Although Australia wasn’t an ideal start to the season for the French team, Greenwood argued that there were “strong positives from the weekend.”

“Pace was there, not disappointed with that. We can always do better, but yeah, really unfortunately Jack didn’t get very far in the race, but so did a lot of other people and far more experienced than him, so, can’t knock him too much for that. I think fundamentally we would have been far happier to come away with a haul of points from that race and we should have done.”