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Jack Doohan has described the Abu Dhabi test as an ‘amazing’ opportunity to get to grips with the Alpine F1 car.
Doohan parachuted into the car as the squad’s nominated rookie driver, working alongside Pierre Gasly in the other Alpine.
While not the Australian’s first time behind the wheel of a 2022-spec Formula 1 machine, it was arguably the most valuable to date.
“It’s all exciting,” he said when asked about the experience by Speedcafe.com.
“I had two FP1s this year, which were awesome.
“Mexico, which was cut short, and then I had this week in Abu Dhabi.
“But to be honest, like the whole session [last Friday], I can only think of Formula 2, in a way, because that was still my main goal.”
That led to Doohan adopting an especially conservative approach during his Free Practice 1 appearance last week.
He was also conscious about the impact the time in an F1 seat might have once he returned to the wheel of his Formula 2 machine.
“It was a back-to-back session of Qualifying, so I did not want to have any issues coming through,” he explained.
“So every time I’d kind of do something to a corner I’d think, ‘oh, you can’t do that in a Formula 2 car.’
“So it was amazing to have a full day where I could just completely and solely focus on Formula 1 and really extract everything from it.”
That involved not only executing the programme given to him by the team but also continuing to familiarise himself with the cockpit.
“We ran through everything that we did, executed all plans, we didn’t have any issues with the car,” he said.
“So it was a really good and smooth thing.
“We have obviously a lot of doors in Formula 1 that are not there in Formula 2,” he added.
“So just learning to make these adaptations by myself and on my own to ensure that we don’t get lost in the balance on days like this.
“So it’s super beneficial for me and moving forward to next year when I get the hop back in the company.”
