Alex Dunne will have fellow former McLaren junior Martinius Stenshorne alongside him at Rodin Motorsport for the 2026 F2 season.
For most of last year, the Irish driver was teammates with Amaury Cordeel. Across four seasons in F2, the Belgian driver only scored 76 points. In contrast, Dunne bagged 150 in his rookie campaign.
Alex Dunne on the importance of having a strong F2 teammate
In F2 and F3, there has been and will continue to be a big disparity between some teammates. Due to financial concerns for many drivers, some who do not have the natural talent of the top drivers can buy seats. Along with Cordeel, Roy Nissany, Mahaveer Raghunathan and Niels Koolen are other recent examples of this.
Until Martinius Stenshorne joined Alex Dunne for the final two rounds of the 2025 F2 season, the Irish driver revealed to Pit Debrief and other media outlets he could not learn much from the data of the other Rodin car because of the performance difference to the Belgian driver.
Despite that, the County Offaly driver only missed out on the top 10 in qualifying once last season before penalties got applied.
“Well, I think up until now, I think there was a relatively big gap between myself and the other car for most of the year.
“There were a couple of times where there were things that I could maybe have a look at just to compare myself. But I think for the most part, it was very difficult to pick apart things to find for the majority part of the year.”
How Martinius Stenshorne strong start helped Alex Dunne in Qatar
Following a hugely impressive F2 debut in Baku, the Norwegian driver switched from Trident to Rodin Motorsport.
Stenshorne was quick from the start, allowing his Irish teammate to learn some things from him to go faster in certain sections at Lusail.
The 20-year-old is happy to have someone pushing him as it means he can get more out of the car and himself by analysing the data from a fast teammate.
“But in fairness to Martinius [Stenshorne] in Qatar, he jumped in pretty quickly and did a good job there. And so I would say that was kind of the first weekend of the year where I had another reference to properly analyse and learn from and spend a lot more time looking through the data to just see where I can improve.
“Because I think for the most part of the year, even without a strong reference, we’ve still done a good job and kind of getting there by not by ourselves, but I think without having data to properly compare to each weekend, I think we’ve always managed to still reach a very high level.
“And I think then now that I have a teammate who’s there or thereabouts, let’s say, that’s going to make […] the level I’m able to reach, it should make that even higher, which, of course, is what you want.
“So it’s nice to have someone who can push you. And I think it’s a beneficial thing to have, especially in the junior series.”
