Doohan qualified 16th for Saturday’s 19-lap Sprint in Shanghai, one place better than Alpine teammate Pierre Gasly.
A best of 1:32.565s left the Aussie an agonising 0.036s shy of Gabriel Bortoleto’s time, the Sauber driver 15th fastest in SQ1 and the last to progress from the opening stanza of the three-part Sprint Qualifying session.
“In the end, a combination of factors fed into the frustrating outcome in Sprint Qualifying, particularly traffic on track during the push lap,” Doohan said.
“But we will keep our heads down and aim to maximise what we can from the Sprint Race in the morning.”
Doohan endured a disrupted build-up to qualifying when his Alpine ground to a halt on track during the only practice session of the weekend.
With 15 minutes remaining, the rookie was forced to clamber out of the stricken machine without having completed a qualifying simulation run.
Initially reporting a power steering issue, Doohan switched quickly switched the car off and parked on track with what at the time appeared to be a hydraulics issue.
“We just had a PU issue at the end of the session,” he explained.
“It didn’t really impact me so much.
“There’s one flying lap that I missed out on, but luckily, I had a variety of number of laps before that.”
Alpine showed itself to be a dark horse in Australia last weekend, with Doohan unlucky not to progress to Qualifying 3 after a Lewis Hamilton spin drew the yellow flags.
The Melbourne performance built on a similarly promising showing through pre-season testing in Bahrain, with the Enstone operation vying with Williams for best-of-the-rest honours.
That pace has not been repeated thus far in China, though the limited practice and traffic in Sprint Qualifying went some way to mask any potential Alpine may have.
“The car felt good across the day,” Doohan said.
“We will look into the data and see what we can improve tomorrow in Qualifying and hopefully put ourselves in a much better position for the grand prix.”
The Chinese GP Sprint begins at 14:00 AEDT with qualifying for Sunday’s race to follow at 18:00 AEDT.
