Do we like them?Do we like Jack Doohan?
Our score: 6 out of 10. No harmful words or acts turned up, but the record is thin on both causes and character, so he lands in the middle-upper range.
Jack Doohan is the Gold Coast kid who grew up in the shadow of a motorcycle legend, his dad Mick being a five-time world champion. He came through the Alpine junior ladder and got his shot at a Formula 1 seat with the French team, which he lost after only a handful of races in 2025.
The messy part of his story is that exit. He crashed out of his home grand prix in Melbourne, struggled through the early races, and was replaced after the Miami round. His dad later called the way Alpine handled it “unfair”, saying Jack had a long-term contract.
The ugliest bit is what happened around it. Doohan says he received serious death threats, including emails saying he would be maimed if he stayed in the car, and that he had armed men around him at the Miami weekend. Nobody should cop that for driving a race car, and it says nothing bad about him.
In May 2025 a fake image, made to look like a post from his father, did the rounds online. Jack first blamed Argentine fans, then walked it back, saying instead that multiple Argentine outlets had wrongly reported the fabricated image. He begged people to stop targeting his family. It was a heat-of-the-moment slip he corrected, not a pattern.
On the harm test we came up empty-handed in a clean way: no comments about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the climate, no pet causes, and no run of projects with anyone pushing a culture-war line. He mostly talks about racing. On the court record, the searches turned up nothing against him; the only legal story out there belongs to his dad, not him.
As for the comeback, he is now Haas reserve driver and races LMP2 sportscars with Nielsen Racing in the European Le Mans Series, with F1 still the goal. In his own words, it was a “tough period” at Alpine, and he is trying to get back to enjoying racing. That's a reasonable way to respond to getting dumped.