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Jack Doohan was left disappointed but relieved that his Free Practice 1 outing at the Formula 1 Mexico City Grand Prix was cut short.
The Australian substituted for Esteban Ocon in the first 60-minutes of running only for an anomaly on the power unit to curtail his outing.
It meant he managed just 13 laps before he had to climb out of the car, the team replacing the Renault power unit ahead of Ocon’s return in Free Practice 2.
“We unfortunately just saw a little bit of an issue at the end of my first run, which then followed into the second run,” Doohan said.
“But I’m happy in a way, not for my running, but that we found this issue now instead of [it] happening later in the weekend and potentially could have affected us to score points.”
The outing was Doohan’s first at a Formula 1 weekend and comes after three outings in last year’s Alpine A521. He’s also driven the 2022-spec car at a filming day in Monza.
The Formula 2 race winner has been proactive in gaining the opportunity with Alpine which would have previously fallen to Oscar Piastri.
With the Melburnian heading to McLaren for 2023, he was benched in favour of Doohan, who is next in line in the squad’s academy programme.
“There’s been quite a bit of prep leading up to this, and I’ve been preparing myself, kind of trying to make my way into this paddock since the news broke at the start of August,” he said.
“The nerves that I’d say usually would be from jumping from Formula 2 to Formula 1, and that being such a big thing were, I’d say, a little bit less, just because I was trying to put myself into a position where this is where I want to be; I want to be driving Formula 1.
“So I’d say there were more nerves four weeks ago than there were today.
“Obviously, when I hopped in the car and I was pulling out of the garage there was a lot of excitement, a lot of joy, heaps of emotions going on, but kind of once I was out on track that really kind of flushed away.
“Hard to describe really what I was feeling, but it was a really cool sensation.”
Though his running was curtailed on Friday, the 19-year-old will have another opportunity when he replaces Fernando Alonso for Free Practice 1 at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix next month.
