Alpine confirm Doohan crashed after failing to close his DRS at turn one · RaceFans

Alpine has confirmed the cause of Jack Doohan’s huge crash in the second practice session for the Japanese Grand Prix.

Team principal Oliver Oakes said Doohan failed to close his Drag Reduction System as he entered the first corner.

The Alpine driver spun into a barrier at turn one on his fifth lap of the session. As the corner is taken at such high speeds, drivers may not brake as they turn into it, and therefore have to deactivate DRS manually.

“We are all relieved to see Jack walk away from his incident in free practice two and glad to see he is okay after his precautionary checks,” said Oakes.

“It was a misjudgement of not closing the DRS into turn one. It is something to learn from and I know Jack and the team will be ready for tomorrow. His crew will work hard to have the car prepared after the damage.”

Doohan was able to climb out of his car afterwards. He was bemused by the crash and asked his race engineer “did something happen?” as soon as his car came to a rest.

The driver asked his race engineer twice more for an explanation while reassuring him he was unhurt. “We’ll just come back to you, mate,” Doohan was told. “We’re just looking at everything on our side here.”

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Doohan said he was “okay” after the crash. “It was a heavy one, something that caught me by surprise, and I will learn from it.”

The crash leaves Doohan very short of mileage after the first day of running at Suzuka. He did not participate in the first practice session as Alpine chose to run Ryo Hirakawa in his car.

His car was heavily damaged in the crash, which caused the session to be stopped for over 20 minutes so the barriers he hit could be repaired. “I know the team has a lot of work ahead to repair the car going into tomorrow, so thanks in advance to them for their efforts,” he said.

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