Putting Franco Colapinto through a TPC outing as Jack Doohan fought back from a battering in a huge FP2 crash at the Japanese Grand Prix, Ralf Schumacher says the Australian has “no support from the team”.

Even before his first race of the F1 2025 season, it was speculated that Doohan’s days as an Alpine driver were numbered.

‘You can tell there’s no support from the team’

Said to be anything from three to five races, this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix marks race number four of the season, and potentially of his championship, for Doohan.

The Australian has yet to get off the mark this season but while his team-mate Pierre Gasly also hasn’t scored a point, Doohan’s campaign has also been marred by two big crashes.

He crashed out of the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, one of several drivers losing control in the rain, before suffering a second big crash in FP2 for the Japanese Grand Prix.

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Although initially it was speculated that his 180mph crash could’ve been the result of his Alpine A525 bottoming out or even a gust of tailwind, Alpine put it down to “misjudgement” on the driver’s side with Doohan not closing his DRS as he entered the high-speed Turn 1.

“It was a misjudgment of not closing the DRS into Turn 1,” declared team principal Oliver Oakes. “It is something to learn from.”

The following day Alpine had reserve driver Paul Aron laying down the laps at the Monza circuit before Colapinto, the driver tipped to replace Doohan if things don’t work out, in action at the Italian circuit.

Schumacher, having already claimed that Doohan’s FP2 crash was the result of pressure on a driver who “not sure he’ll be at the next race”, has blamed Alpine for not supporting the 22-year-old.

“Sorry, but if you don’t want to replace Doohan, why would you already let Colapinto drive [in a TPC]?” Schumacher said on the Backstage Boxengasse podcast. “It’s all piling up.”

Going on to call out Alpine for putting test driver Ryo Hirakawa in Doohan’s car on the Friday of the Japanese Grand Prix weekend when the Australian was the team-mate who needed mileage the most, Schumacher added: “They didn’t let him drive, which is a disaster on a new track. They could’ve done that with Gasly in Bahrain instead.

“You can tell there’s no support from the team.”

Doohan, though, isn’t without blame as Schumacher believes he is a driver who makes mistakes, and did so in “Formula 1, he goes for gaps that aren’t really there.”

But at the end of it all, the “blame lies with the team” says the former F1 driver.

With this weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix forming part two of the season’s first triple-header, the German believes Doohan’s task is, at least on paper, a simple one.

“That’s Formula 1: if he delivers a good result, then the whole debate disappears – at least for now. That should be his next goal,” he said.

However, Auto Motor und Sport journalist Michael Schmidt believes Doohan’s two crashes in three weekends have already opened the door, guided by the chequebook, for Alpine executive advisor Flavio Briatore to boot him out of the car.

“There’s a good argument for Flavio Briatore,” he claims. “He doesn’t even need to look at the stopwatch.

“Things aren’t looking so bad for Doohan, he’s not that far from Gasly.

“But he delivered two total write-offs, and that, of course, goes into the budget cap.

“Melbourne, first lap at 250 km/h, he hit the wall and the tyres flew off the car. There wasn’t much left of the car. And now that [Japan FP1] was, I would say, one of the worst accidents in recent times.

“When you saw the camera perspective from the side, the speed at which the car hammered into the tyre well. It was really terrifying. You fly towards the first corner at 320 km/h.

“He left the DRS open because it worked on the simulator, and there was no accident. And then he thought, maybe it always works like that; he should have asked Gasly beforehand.”

According to reports, Doohan’s crash in Japan cost Alpine roughly £1.3m million to fix.

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