Jack Doohan isn’t dressing it up: if he’s going to get back onto the Formula 1 grid, it needs to happen for 2027 — and he knows the clock doesn’t wait around for reserve drivers.
Speaking in Monaco while working as part of Sky Sports’ coverage, the Australian framed next season as the make-or-break moment in his bid to rebuild an F1 career after losing his Alpine race seat last year. Now attached to Haas in a reserve role, Doohan said the longer he’s out of a full-time seat, the more the maths starts working against him.
“That’s the goal for next year,” Doohan said when asked if returning to the grid remained the priority. “You’d be a little bit silly to think if it doesn’t happen for 2027 it’s not going to happen unless some insane things happen.
“So the focus is to put myself in a position to get in the car for next year and, if that doesn’t happen, there’ll be some great opportunities to continue having a good race career in some fun cars.”
It’s a blunt assessment, but also an unusually realistic one in a paddock that tends to sell hope as a currency. Doohan’s situation is familiar: close enough to F1 to be seen, far enough away that the driver market can move on without you. The reserve gig keeps his name on team briefings and in simulator schedules, but it also comes with a hard truth — you can only be “next in line” for so long before you’re simply not in the line at all.
To keep racing sharp — and to keep his reputation as more than a name on a lanyard — Doohan has built an endurance programme alongside the Haas role. He’s signed with Nielsen Racing in LMP2 and will contest the European Le Mans Series, with a Le Mans debut in the same class on the calendar. His team-mates include David Heinemeier Hansson and Edward Pearson.
It’s a smart way to stay relevant, even if it’s not the plan A. A driver in his position needs laps, race starts, pressure, traffic — the bits you don’t get by turning up to Grands Prix and waiting for a Friday session that might never come. Doohan’s schedule has already begun to fill up as the season moved into Europe.
“Second race last weekend in Montreal, so it wasn’t very active in the first part, especially missing it through the Middle East,” he said, explaining how his year has ramped up. “But now as we’re coming into Europe, getting a lot more racing under the belt, which is nice, back-to-back weekends.
“I miss Barcelona unfortunately next week to head to Le Mans which will be cool as well for the first time.”
For Haas, the arrangement is a balancing act: it gets them a motivated reserve with something to prove, while allowing him to pursue seat time elsewhere. Doohan made a point of thanking “the teams on both sides” for enabling the double programme, suggesting there’s genuine flexibility rather than a paper agreement.
But the other part of the reality check is opportunity — or the lack of it. Doohan admitted his F1 running has been limited so far this year, with Ryo Hirakawa picking up most of the early-season work. That’s partly down to timing and logistics: Doohan joined the Haas set-up after Hirakawa was already embedded in the programme, and these things tend to be planned months in advance.
“When you join into a new programme mid-February with another reserve driver, by Ryo already being involved in the team, things are allocated quite well in advance,” he said. “We’ll be getting into the car soon, which will be very nice, but just to be able to race anything just proves the sticker to my name that I am a racing driver.”
That line — “the sticker to my name” — lands with a bit of edge. Drivers don’t usually talk like that unless they feel the sport is starting to define them by status rather than ability. And in a year where the grid is still tight and the driver market is increasingly shaped by timing, backing and long-term plans, Doohan is effectively saying he can’t afford to become a footnote.
For now, his route back runs through two parallel worlds: doing enough at Haas to remain a credible F1 option, and doing enough in LMP2 to prove he’s not standing still. He’s also careful not to portray endurance racing as a consolation prize — more an insurance policy that still lets him build a career in “some fun cars” if F1 doesn’t come calling.
Still, the subtext is clear. Doohan’s pinned his hopes to 2027 not because it’s convenient, but because it’s realistic. In modern F1, absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. It just creates space for the next name.
