Jack Doohan didn’t arrive in Miami in 2026 worrying about tyre deg or whether Alpine had finally found a clean window for its updates. He arrived needing armed protection.
The Australian has revealed he was forced to move around the Miami paddock with extra security after receiving a stream of violent threats online — abuse triggered not by anything he’d said, but by the simple fact he was still in the Alpine car while a loud corner of the internet demanded Franco Colapinto get the seat instead.
It’s the sort of sentence that should sound absurd in a sport as tightly controlled as Formula 1. Yet Doohan’s account, shared as part of Netflix’s upcoming eighth season of *Drive to Survive*, lands uncomfortably close to the truth of the modern paddock: the people inside the gates are increasingly having to factor in the behaviour of people who aren’t.
“I got serious death threats for this grand prix, saying they’re going to kill me here, if I’m not out of the car,” Doohan said in the series. “I had six or seven emails saying if I am still in the car by Miami, all my limbs will be cut off.
“Wednesday, I was there with my f***ing girlfriend and my trainer, and I’ve got three armed men around me – I had to call my police escort to come and get it under control.”
F1 confirmed it was aware of the threats and that Doohan’s security was increased accordingly. The championship’s statement was firm — that there’s no place for abuse online or in person, and that the sport will report offenders to relevant authorities and platforms — but the wider point is impossible to dodge: it happened, it was serious enough to change his movements on a race weekend, and it was sparked by a driver-market argument being waged by strangers behind burner accounts.
Doohan’s story also fits a pattern. Drivers have been steadily distancing themselves from social media not because it’s distracting, but because it’s corrosive.
Lando Norris, who hasn’t posted on X since 2024, said at Imola that he’d stepped away again. “I’ve not been on social media for a few weeks now,” he explained. “It’s just not something I enjoy. I don’t need to. It’s my life. I can do what I like.”
Liam Lawson went further, saying he deleted his accounts entirely. “It’s so much better. So, so much better,” he said on the *Gypsy Tales* podcast, calling it a “toxic place”. He also nailed the dynamic that lets it fester: “99 percent of the time, what people would say online, [they] would never have the balls to say to somebody’s face.”
Doohan’s case had an extra layer because it wasn’t just generalised bile after a crash or a penalty. He was racing with a very obvious narrative hanging over him — Colapinto joining Alpine’s programme with Flavio Briatore’s support, and the sense among some fans that Doohan was an obstacle rather than a driver trying to make his way in F1.
Miami, in the end, became his final race in the Alpine seat. He was dropped in favour of Colapinto, a ruthless decision that spoke to Alpine’s internal pressure as much as its driver evaluation.
But the noise didn’t stop with the change. When Colapinto then crashed in qualifying, a fake parody account posted something presented as if it were linked to Doohan’s side, mocking the Argentine. The post wasn’t real, but in the churn of a race weekend it travelled fast enough to cause damage anyway — the kind of low-effort, high-impact misinformation that’s become a favourite weapon in fan wars.
Doohan felt compelled to publicly ask for it to stop, particularly as his family were being dragged into the mess.
“As you can clearly see, the story circulating above is completely false,” he wrote. “It was fabricated by Argentine fans attempting to portray me and my family in a negative light.
“They edited the original content to make it appear as though my father posted it, which is entirely untrue.
“Please stop harassing my family. I didn’t think it would have to get to this point.”
The FIA has also been pulled into the fight. President Mohammed Ben Sulayem issued a statement via Instagram backing Yuki Tsunoda and Colapinto for speaking out about online abuse, and pushing the governing body’s “United Against Online Abuse” campaign as a framework for stronger action. It was the kind of message that reads like it should be unnecessary — “No one should be subjected to threats, hatred, or discrimination” — yet it’s now become part of the sport’s weekly vocabulary.
Doohan, meanwhile, has moved on from the Alpine spotlight. He’s found a role at Haas as a reserve driver for the 2026 season — a reset, and perhaps a quieter place to do the work without every session being treated as a referendum.
But the uncomfortable reality is this: teams can change line-ups, drivers can log off, and the sport can issue statements. None of that, on its own, stops a paddock from needing armed security because someone drove an F1 car while the wrong people on the internet decided they shouldn’t.
