Jack Doohan Reflects on his Japan GP Qualifying Result after Massive Shunt

The Alpine driver Jack Doohan faced two challenging days at the Japanese Grand Prix. On Friday, he broke his car in half, and on Saturday, he qualified in a disappointing 19th place.

Doohan's car did not close its DRS at turn 1, which led to a massive shunt that left the driver rocked.

Telemetry data leaves a mystery regarding whether the crash was due to driver error or a problem with the car, but the optics of the crash did not appear favorable.

Then, during the race's qualifying session, Doohan struggled to set a competitive lap and finished more than six tenths slower than his teammate Pierre Gasly.

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Gasly managed to advance the car into Q2, finishing P11. Doohan, in comparison, had an underwhelming performance.

"To be honest, yesterday I was quite in a good way and just a rebuilding over P3, taking it easy, but as well we only got three laps then with both red flags, so not much time to also tune the car and also myself," Doohan told reporters after qualifying.

"It's just unfortunate that I have to obviously then take such big steps to get back to it as it's a place around here similar to a street track where P1, P2, P3 you keep taking steps forward and you build up your stones and then you start from there and I was sort of having to jump a bit more."

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"In the end of Q1, I think the potential maybe of Q2 was on the cars, which would have been, to be honest, a great effort."

"I had to just take obviously big steps forward and my final lap I just asked a bit too much through Turn 14, I was going to run wide so I had to get out of it."

"If I didn't do that, I'd still be here speaking with you now, but I had to give it a go and unfortunately I would have liked to have done that over FP."

A sizeable crash for Jack Doohan in FP2 😱

He is OK and out of the car#F1 #JapaneseGP pic.twitter.com/uCDCUcGKcy
— Formula 1 (@F1) April 4, 2025

The Australian faces immense pressure to perform, as the team's reserve driver, Franco Colapinto, was secured during the off-season for a substantial buyout fee from Williams.

A team isn't going to pay that much for a driver to merely be on reserve; at some point, either this year or next, Colapinto will be pushed into the seat.

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Despite the poor result, Doohan is trying to take positives from Saturday's session.

"But I'm happy with the step we made from P3 to Q because although on the timesheets I looked 14th, I was definitely probably best making 20th," he said.

"So I think there was some small improvements which we have to be happy about."

Full footage of Jack Doohan's huge crash in FP2!#F1 #JapaneseGP #Formula1 #f1jp pic.twitter.com/r7Kn2Zw4Lu
— Extreme Cars (@extremecars__) April 4, 2025

"We really can only move forward and we're just looking to learn as well if it's in the wet, to learn as much as I can in the wet, but also maximise any possibilities or circumstances where we can get further up the grid."

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