Australian driver Jack Duane left the Alpine team after the end of the 2025 Formula 1 season.

A product of the Alpine Academy, Duen made his Formula 1 debut at the 2024 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and has an early chance ahead of his debut season in the royal race.

But even before the start of the championship, Alpin signed several reserve drivers, including Franco Colapinto. A quarter of the way through the season, Douin failed to give teammate Pierre Gasly a consistent challenge: in qualifying he beat the Frenchman in only two of eight sessions (including sprint qualifying), in half he was more than six-tenths of a second behind, and his best result of the race was 13th place.

As a result, the team decided to transfer Colapinto to the operational squad and return Duane to the reserve pilot role. The 22-year-old Australian himself admitted that this decision was a heavy blow for him.

Now Duane is finally leaving Enstone to focus on another phase of his career. Possible options include racing with Kondo Racing in Super Formula, but there is no official confirmation of this project yet. It is known that during testing at the Suzuka circuit, the Australian driver crashed his car three times at the same Degner 2 corner.

The Red Bull Formula 1 team, which has used Honda engines in the past seasons, will switch to its own engines in cooperation with Ford as of 2026.

Bulls boss Laurent Mekies hopes the engines can compete with traditional manufacturers Mercedes and Ferrari.

“It must be madness to start producing your own engines. Only Red Bull can get involved and start producing their own engines when their competitors have been doing this for 90 years. Tough months are ahead and it’s hard to hope that we’ll come up with a top-level engine right away.”

“But I am proud of our partnership with Ford. We will have a difficult start, but we will see,” Mekis said.

F1 will have new regulations on engines and aerodynamics from the 2026 season.