My working from home diary – Jack Doohan

Jack Doohan has penned a guest column from his home in Monaco, giving fans an insight into his life outside of racing, and how he has kept in prime condition.

The HWA RACELAB ace discusses his time back home in Australia, his training routine, and looks ahead to the start of the season in July, as he gets set to make his FIA Formula 3 debut in Spielberg, Austria.

Family time

We have been very fortunate in Australia, in that we haven’t had the same amount of cases here, as many places in the rest of the world unfortunately have done. There was a period of our around four weeks when it was at its worst here and we were locked down, but I am lucky at home as we have quite a bit of land, as opposed to being locked in an apartment, like many people were.

This is the longest period of time that I’ve spent home in Australia in around four years, so it was great to be able to see my family for such an extended period of time. Especially when restrictions were lifted and I was able to see my stretched-out family as well, more than I have done in a while.

I live in Queensland, in a place called the Gold Coast, it’s an amazing part of the country. We are just heading into winter, so it was starting to get quite cool, but to be honest, I can’t remember the last time I was home during winter, so it was nice.

Karting and simulator work

There is a go-karting track at our home, so I was able to get out there every day, which was very beneficial. I was very lucky to be able to keep karting, and obviously everybody was jumping onto the simulator bandwagon and doing all of the e-racing. I’ve got a simulator at home, so I was able to stretch out and do a fair bit of work. Without that, it would have definitely been a lot harder to jump back into Qualifying at the Red Bull Ring, with only the 45-minute Free Practice as preparation.

My days tend to centre around studying in the morning, before heading into the gym for a couple of hours. Working from home, there wasn’t really much opportunity to mix the training up too much, but I was able to go running as well. It would have been easy in quarantine to sit downstairs and enjoy the nothingness of all this and just sit on the couch. Thankfully, I haven't done that!

Back to Europe

I’m back in Europe now, I arrived back in Monaco on 10 June, and it’s been pretty relaxed here. There is only one active case, and everyone is moving around and restaurants are open. Everywhere is still fairly quiet and face masks are mandatory, but aside from that you can at least keep to a kind of daily schedule.

I don’t really know too many people here other than friends of my father Mick Doohan, such as Mark Webber, David Coulthard and Allan McNish, so I’ve kept busy with my preparation for racing and my studying, while still doing plenty on the simulator here, which arrived last Tuesday.

The season begins

This will be my first season in FIA F3, racing at the same tracks on the same weekends as Formula 1 and Formula 2 – that’s quite a big step up, even from Euroformula. You are in the mix here and it’s very exciting. To have that delayed for three months was tough, but now with eight races in a 10-week period, I am more excited than ever to get on with it.

I am definitely not planning on just easing into it. Obviously, there are some second and third year drivers on the grid, and some quick rookies, but I am going in to win the Championship. I don’t want to go in as a rookie and take a rookie season, because you need to make an impact. I want to fight at the front and be in and around it.

Working with HWA has been fantastic so far, they are so different from anything else I’ve experienced. It is such a huge group and their work ethic and their actions behind the scenes are extremely professional. They have the background with Mercedes and Championships like DTM and it’s a really impressive setup at the factory.

I really feel that if we can put everything together, with all of the resources they have available, then we can have a good season together and push forward.

See you soon,

Jack