F2 championship leader Alex Dunne extended his lead at the top by two points as he took pole position for Sunday’s Feature race at the Monaco GP. The stewards took no further action following his early clash with Rafael Villagómez.
The Irishman continues to make history as he’s the first driver from the relatively small country of his to take pole in this category.
Alex Dunne admits F2 Monaco GP pole felt unlikely after practice
The 19-year-old had looked solid in the only practice session on Thursday. However it looked like a best of the rest to be P2 on the grid as Victor Martins smoked the field by over half a second in the session.
Speaking to Pit Debrief and other media outlets post-qualifying, the driver from Offaly thought pole was out of reach heading into it, although changes to the car brought it alive in the end.
“Yeah, a tricky one.
“I think, to be completely honest, I think the further we got into qualifying, I think after the lap before my last push, to be honest, I thought it’s going to be pretty difficult to beat what Victor did.
“And I think coming from FP as well, how fast [Martins was], I think he was like six tenths clear of P2 in FP.
“So, to be honest, I thought the pole was going to go to Victor and it was going to be a fight for second.
“But no, in the end, I think I managed to put all three sectors together.
“It wasn’t the cleanest lap. There was a couple of little mistakes in there, but I think that’s Monaco. I think to put a perfect lap together in Monaco is always going to be difficult.
“But overall, I was very happy.
“The team and I made some changes to the car overnight from FP and those changes definitely worked.
“So yeah, I’m very happy.”
The fine margins at the end
Come the end of Group A and Group B qualifying, Dunne beat Martins to F2 Feature race pole at the Monaco GP by 0.003s.
At first Alex Dunne thought he was not on pole as his dash on the steering wheel had shown him a lap time of a 1:21.149, which would have been 0.004s slower than Victor Martins’ Group A benchmark. Ultimately it was good enough as the live timing credited him with a 1:21.142.
“Yeah, I think I wasn’t sure initially and I asked the question on the radio because the lap time we get on the steering wheel is different for the live timing. So what I had on the steering wheel, I think was actually like four thousandths slower than what he had done. But on the live timing, they were a bit nicer to me.
“But no, when they told me, I was very, very happy. I felt like the lap was good enough to be pole.
“I was just hoping, I knew it was going to be very, very close. But no, very happy.”
A superb run of form for Alex Dunne in the 2025 F2 season
Rodin driver Dunne has had a blistering start to his rookie campaign in F2. He’s won two of the three feature races, and scored a podium in the Jeddah Sprint, to lead Luke Browning by eight points ahead of the Monaco Sprint and Feature events.
It’s arguably his best run of form since crushing the opposition in British F4 back in 2022. The Irishman also finished P2 to now Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli in Italian F4 that year as Rafael Câmara and himself were the only drivers to keep the rapid Italian honest that campaign.
Dunne outlined how comfortable he feels in the car at the moment and how he has chipped away at qualifying since the beginning of the year, with a lot of help from Rodin. Monaco is his first pole since 2023 at Zandvoort when he was in GB3.
“Yeah, I feel really comfortable at the moment, to be honest.
“But I think the team are playing a massive part in supporting that comfort.
“And, you know, I think especially through the whole year, but especially in a place like Monaco, being comfortable in your environment and with a car and being comfortable with the balance that you have in the car is really, really important.
“To be honest, every time I’ve asked the team to make a change to the car, the change has done exactly what I wanted it to do. I haven’t really felt like I’ve had to chase something. You know, we’ve kind of always been in that window and when we’ve made a change, it’s fixed whatever the minor problems we had were.
“And so now I think myself, I feel like I’m performing at a really good level right now.
“I think up until this point, qualifying has probably been one of our weaker points of the weekend and I’ve struggled slightly with putting the lap together. But I’m glad that I saved that for Monaco.”
Alex Dunne talks through his pole lap for the F2 Monaco GP Feature race
It was solid progress for the Rodin driver across his three push laps. He did a 1:21.781 initially, followed by a 1:21.437, and in the end he got down to a 1:21.142 to get P1 for Sunday’s Feature.
Dunne went purple in all three sectors. It was the last one where he made critical gains. After only doing personal bests in Sector 3 on laps 1 and 2, he found over a tenth on his previous best to go purple there right at the end as well.
The pole lap was not perfect either. As Dunne points out, he had a sizeable lockup into Mirabeau and went wide of the apex.
Ultimately it was good enough, however.
“Yeah, I think on my lap, I locked up and made a mistake in T5 and then I locked the rears again in turn six and made another mistake. So one corner after another, there was two mistakes.
“And I think I kind of thought ‘hmm, the pole here is probably going to be difficult.’ But every time I looked at the dash, I could see the delta and I could see that I was still going quicker and quicker.
“I think there was a couple of times during the lap where I thought I was just going to lose time and I didn’t really feel like I had the tyres anymore on the last push.
“But I guess with the fuel effect and with my confidence building through the session still, every time I looked at the delta on the wheel, I was still going quicker and quicker. So no, I just tried to push as much as possible.
“Like I said, I thought the pole was going to be difficult, but in the end, I think I did quite a good last sector and I think that’s kind of where the pole came from.
“Yeah, definitely a difficult session. I felt like I had to work quite hard to be P1, but I’m glad with the end result, of course.”
Alex Dunne on the different qualifying format for F2 at the Monaco GP
Due to the tight nature of the streets of Monaco and 22 cars in F2, qualifying is split into two groups over fifteen minutes.
In a standard qualifying session at tracks like Imola, Spa or anywhere apart from Monaco, drivers normally get two runs on two sets of tyres. On those weekends one or two push laps take a place each run.
In Monaco on Friday it was one set of tyres and doing a push-cool-push-cool-push for the Irish polesitter and most others.
Dunne admits he prefers that way to standard F2 qualifying.
“I think I probably feel more comfortable in qualifying sessions like this, to be honest.
“I think in normal weekends, you can go out. I think the general thing for run one of a normal weekend is push-cool-push or three pushes, whatever it may be.
“And I think sometimes you can do a run one and then you come back in, you pit and then you go back out again. Once you go back out again, unless there’s a red flag, whatever you’ve done on run one realistically is pointless.
“So I think kind of being in the car for the whole session, finding the rhythm, doing one lap after another, I think for me is more enjoyable.
“And it feels like almost less pressure in a way, because it’s not that you don’t have to do the job twice. You go out and those three laps are the laps you have to fight for pole.
“It’s not like quali is split into two parts, which is what it’s kind of like on a normal weekend.
“So yeah, I think for me, it’s a more enjoyable format. And I like being in the car for the whole session. Of course, I quite enjoy driving as well. So driving the whole time is nice.
“But I think I felt pretty good. It wasn’t too intense, to be honest. I felt very relaxed the whole way through the session.
“I knew that putting it on pole was going to be difficult, but putting it on pole is always difficult.
“So I think we’re in a championship this year where all of the drivers are very, very good. And you’re never really going to be in a scenario where you can put it on pole and do a bad lap.
“So yeah, like I said, putting it on pole is always difficult. And I’m glad we managed that today.”
The potential advantage Group B holds in split qualifying at the Monaco Grand Prix for F2 and F3
Although Nikola Tsolov took pole position for the Formula 3 Feature race via Group A on Friday, it is generally seen that ending up in Group B is an advantage for qualifying in Monaco.
Asked by Pit Debrief about the split qualifying system for the Monaco GP round and the advantages of disadvantages that holds, Alex Dunne was fully aware that running in Group B when the track had more rubber down was key to his pole position for Sunday.
As well as that, all drivers in Group B know what time they need to beat from Group A.
“Well, I’m the one on pole, so I’m going to say that the format is great.
“No, I mean, realistically, I think yes. Even though I’m on pole, I think I will agree that realistically, in terms of performance, the second group is probably quicker.
“I think in the end, it’s important about doing your job and maximising what you have at the time, and you can’t do anything better than P1 in your own group.
“But I would agree that the second group probably does have a little bit more performance.
“And as a driver as well, you kind of have a reference to chase the whole session. I knew what the pole lap time was, and I knew that’s what I needed to chase.
“So I think in your mind that probably gives you a little something to reference, which you don’t have in the first group.
“But at the same time, to be honest, I think if you look at free practice, for example, when we have all cars on track, the traffic was a disaster.
“So most of the time, not everyone is on the same run plan, some are doing more warm laps, double cools, whatever it may be.
“If you’re on a good lap and someone’s on a different plan to you and your lap gets ruined, then especially around a place like Monaco, it’s very difficult.
“So from a traffic point of view, I think it’s a no-brainer to have the two qualis split. But I don’t really think there’s anything you can do about the performance gain.
“Last year in F2 and F3, the pole was in the first group, I think.
“So it’s really just kind of how it goes.”
