'It's a joke' - Doohan's fury with Alpine explained

Jack Doohan was furious with his Alpine team for his elimination from the first part of sprint qualifying at the Miami Grand Prix, calling it “a joke”.

Doohan, who is still looking for the first points of his rookie F1 season, found himself stranded against the pitwall and had to be pushed back into line by his Alpine mechanics after being released from the garage for his final run.

He was released side-by-side with team-mate Pierre Gasly and felt he didn’t have enough room to rotate his car into the pitlane without clipping the pitwall.

The time wasted proved costly with Doohan falling further back in the pitlane queue and then not reaching the chequered flag in time to start his final flying lap, despite pushing harder than normal on his outlap.

“That’s not acceptable,” Doohan fumed on the radio after being eliminated in 17th place.

“If you’re going to send him before me, you have to make sure he’s ready, I can’t [turn enough] because he’s going to run into me.

“Then you guys put me out of Q1. That’s a joke.”

Doohan was visibly furious when he exited his car, and his frustration hadn’t dulled by the time he faced the media.

“It all comes down to the last flying lap, feeling was good, but ended up getting blocked on my way out of the pitlane, which was a mess-up, especially because it was from the other car,” Doohan explained.

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“Then I was never going to make the final timed lap, that’s why they make the length of qualy that long, you do two laps and improve quite a lot on second lap.

“I ended up being the last car out there and didn’t get a chance to do a second timed lap.”

Doohan said his first lap was “really messy”, so he felt there was “a lot more time in the car for the second lap, I guess we’ll never know”.

Tsunoda's Red Bull qualifying low

Yuki Tsunoda failed to make it out of the first part of qualifying for the first time as a Red Bull Racing driver as he also didn’t reach the chequered flag, ending up in 18th place.

Tsunoda had a scruffy opening SQ1 effort - not helped by him encountering Ollie Bearman’s Haas emerging from the pits - that left everything riding on his final effort.

Tsunoda was told to push on his outlap before backing off at the final braking zone to allow team-mate Max Verstappen through, only for Verstappen to then pit anyway.

“Some intelligent car [Bearman] just came out from the pits and aborted [affected] my lap. A lot of cars cost my lap quite a lot,” Tsunoda explained afterwards.

“First lap...even last corner I had quite a lock-up, but anyway the lap was pretty much gone already from Turn 1 already because of the car [Bearman] at pit exit.

“Just not able to do a proper lap at all, that's it.”

Tsunoda also criticised the “pretty poor” communication that leaves him with a mountain to climb in the sprint race.

Bearman's anguish

Bearman lost the chance to recover from his FP1 crash as he too missed the chequered flag and failed to start his final flying lap, leaving him 20th and slowest of all drivers.

Like Doohan and Tsunoda, he was told to push on his outlap but fell short of the chequered flag, crossing the line just after Tsunoda.

“Not good enough,” Bearman told his team right after he missed the flag.

He wasn’t impressed by the time he reached the media after exiting the car either.

“It was tough, of course, but I only did one lap, so we missed the flag unfortunately. So we need to analyse that,” Bearman said after SQ1.

He didn’t yet have an answer for what went so wrong.