Bearman slams Alpine F1’s “incredibly harsh” handling of Doohan

Just a quarter of the way into the 2025 Formula 1 season, one of the six ‘rookies’ making their full-season debut has already been benched in favour of another.

Last week, Alpine announced it was replacing Jack Doohan with Franco Colapinto – a manoeuvre which had seemed virtually inevitable since the team added Colapinto to its bulging portfolio of test and reserve drivers in January.

Formerly part of the Williams academy, Colapinto had shown prodigious pace last season after taking Logan Sargeant’s seat, albeit accompanied by an occasional propensity to find the wall. It was already an open secret in the F1 paddock that Doohan’s contract included a performance clause enabling the team to drop him after a given number of races, understood to be six.

Given the difficulty in coaxing maximum performance from the current generation of ground-effect F1 cars, it’s unsurprising that several other rookies have rallied round to support Doohan’s cause.

“I think it’s very difficult in that situation to have that pressure weighing over your head already from race one,” Haas rookie Oliver Bearman told select media including Autosport ahead of this weekend’s Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix at Imola.

“I can only imagine it’s a horrible situation and I feel like his treatment was very unfair. Coming from his position, being a rookie myself, it’s very difficult, especially the first quarter of the season. We’ve gone to – I think – four out of six tracks that have been new for us as rookies.

“We’ve had two sprint events which are even more difficult for us as rookies. And before he even gets to the European season where they’re the tracks he knows, he’s already thrown out of the car.

“So, yeah, incredibly harsh in my opinion.”

There are those who would say that if you are fast enough and talented enough, you will likely succeed. This is true to an extent but there are many nuances and caveats in modern F1.

For instance, some point to the instant impact Mercedes rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli has made. But as revealed in the rather hagiographic, officially approved documentary The Seat, Antonelli benefitted from as much testing as the regulations provided, a thorough programme of off-track preparation with race engineer Peter Bonnington, and a considerably warmer and more supportive approach from team boss Toto Wolff.

It’s also instructive to look at Bearman’s three grand prix outings last year, where he followed up an impressively quick and assured debut at Ferrari in Jeddah with two less obviously distinguished drives for Haas.

“There’s no way of denying that cars that are higher up the grid are more easy to drive,” said Bearman. “There’s a bit more robustness in the aero platform of the car and [you’re] therefore less prone to mistakes.

Jack Doohan, Alpine

Photo by: James Sutton / Motorsport Images

“And I’m even finding about myself that despite having much more experience, I’m more prone to mistakes than I was last year in one race… it’s a lot of pressure.

“I think this trend of kicking people out straight away is a little harsh. Especially in a rookie’s position, a guy with not a lot of experience, six races is a pretty tall order. That’s my feeling anyway.”

Fellow rookie Isack Hadjar, who appears to have exceeded the rather modest expectations Red Bull’s leaders had of him ahead of the season, expressed similar sentiments.

“Even before the season, it smelled a bit bad because I think he entered the season with a lot of pressure expectations,” the Racing Bulls driver said.

“So that’s not really a good environment and it feels quite unfair because six races in, he didn’t have much time to show anything – and it’s not like he had a rocket ship as well…”

One of F1’s oldest soldiers begged to differ, though.

“I don’t think there is much pressure [on rookies], to be honest,” said two-time champion, Fernando Alonso.

Flavio Briatore talks, Fernando Alonso, Renault Sport F1 Team R25

Photo by: Motorsport Images

“There is a lot of preparation: they do Formula 3, they do Formula 2, they know all the circuits, they do simulator, they do TPC [Testing of Previous Cars] programmes, and they get to Formula 1 very well prepared.

“When I made my debut in 2001, I did my seat fit in Minardi one week before – because he was bankrupt and we were not going to Melbourne [for the Australian season-opener], and then Paul Stoddart bought the team and we flew to Melbourne on Monday morning. So the pressure of these days is a little bit different.”

Maybe so – but, back in 2001, it was already known that Alonso, a prodigious talent, had been placed at the struggling Minardi outfit by his manager with a view to preparing him for bigger things at Renault – whose team happened to be run by that same manager.

He’s there again now, pulling the strings as ‘executive advisor’ and responsible for replacing Doohan with Colapinto: Flavio Briatore.