Alpine have confirmed that Jack Doohan will make his F1 race debut a little earlier than expected in the season-closing Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, with the squad releasing Esteban Ocon in a deal that allows the Frenchman to participate in the post-season test for new team Haas.
why would you throw in a rookie in place of an established driver when you still have to fight for P6 in the conatructors?
Doohan is less likely to ram Gasly into the barriers?
Apparently discussions accelerated following Ocon’s P20 quali, so Alpine’s top management may have thought that Doohan cannot do worse than Ocon? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I mean… you can’t finish farther down than p20, but that’s not all that can go wrong. ;)
They don’t care. They’re going to be sold to another oil-state fund. They planned already to be last is 2025 so yeah