Jack Doohan is looking forward to the F1 Bahrain GP and a chance to prove his worth after an weekend tough weekend for him. In fact, the Alpine driver’s last round in Suzuka had definitely not gone according to plan, with Doohan crashing out at turn 1 in his first on track lap. The incident deprived him of much needed track time, important to tweak the setup and find the best performance.
Returning to a better known place
Bahrain, on the other hand, is much more known to the young Australian, and having already done testing in the desert will be a plus for sure. Doohan summed up his season so far ahead of the F1 Bahrain GP, highlighting the need for more consistent performances:
“I look forward to just having that clean weekend, putting it all together. This weekend we have a perfect opportunity to have a full race weekend again and I look forward to coming back to Bahrain—as the others have touched on—somewhere we were testing, albeit I think it’s 25°C hotter here today, so it’s going to be much, much different.
“Car balance, feeling, grip—going to feel terrible. A lot of things that are going to be coming after FP. But I look forward to cracking on. We’re now at, I think, round four. So we’re starting to get into it and this back-to-back-to-back triple header is going to be nice just to keep the flow”
Discussions on his health had also sparked after the end of the Japanese GP, when the rookie driver had needed the help of his team to get out of the car. However, the former Formula 2driver confirmed that he is in good health and that it had just been a thing of the moment: ”Just winded. Just 100%. All completely perfect, yeah. Thank you.”
Positivity is key
Asked on how to reset after such a bad luck streak and so many tough races in a row in hid brief Formula 1 career so far, he remains positive and hopeful, acknowledging that there has always been something to save from every round:
“There’s been at least some silver lining in each weekend and some positives to take away, which have been the most important thing. As long as you learn from the setbacks or things you can improve on, and digest them—then you can make sure you know where those positives came from and how to replicate them,” Doohan concluded, hyped ahead of the F1 Bahrain GP.
“The biggest goal this weekend is just to put the weekend together, have a smooth run from start to finish, and just keep building and inching closer and closer so that we can start to get that complete package.”
Similar but different
Doohan also returned on the differences between the conditions of Sakir during testing in February and the ones the drivers will encounter in the upcoming days, as they will be rather different.
“To be honest Bahrain test was a good place to learn the car initially. I wasn’t exactly super happy leaving the test in general, but now we know especially the areas that we needed to work on and at least the ballpark window and where we’re going to start.
“We definitely won’t be setting the car up where we ended up on one of the evening sessions at 10°C, but certainly trying to target maybe a little bit more at the end of one of those AM sessions, plus a few things that we found post in the simulator.”
How to improve on track racing?
An ever present question in the Formula 1 world, especially with the current generation of challengers, is how to increase the number of overtakes during a race. Among the measures introduced so far there will be in Monaco the compulsion to pit twice. In Doohan‘s opinion, such a measure shouldn’t be introduced at every round.
“Not necessarily for all races—especially in my case in Suzuka, I was very happy that it wasn’t. But yeah, it’s difficult to say. We have circuits that have a higher chance of overtakes and others that are less. That was such a unique circumstance: the conditions, how cold it was. Sector 1, which is usually somewhere that’s so crucial on tyre management—we saw it with the new surface—we could push flat out on.
“So we didn’t really have so many corners that we were struggling with management. I think it was quite unique. I reckon we’re going to be surprised come Sunday night here, in this heat with 38kph gusts coming. The topic of tyre management or complaining will be maybe a little bit different.
