Speaking during last weekend’s Carole Nash Historic Festival at Ireland’s Mondello Park, Formula 2 driver and McLaren junior Alex Dunne reflected on his Austrian Grand Prix FP1 outing and his future in the sport.
Irish Formula 2 driver and Championship contender Alex Dunne appeared at last weekend’s Carole Nash Historic Festival in Mondello Park. Speaking during the event, Dunne reflected on his FP1 appearance at the Austrian GP.
Recalling his FP1 outing, Dunne admitted the opportunity to drive Formula 1 machinery was a dream come through in itself.
“You know, definitely I think if you told 12 year old me that I’m going to be where I am today, he definitely wouldn’t have believed you,” Dunne told the crowd. “And you know, I think a good showing of that, if you look at FP1 this year in Austria, for example.
“I think, let alone, even if you take away the fact that there’s an opportunity of being an F1 driver. I think the sole opportunity of just getting to drive the car in FP1 with McLaren in front of all the fans and stuff, I think for me already as a young kid, that’s already a dream come true. So, we’ve come a long way, and we’re knocking on the door of it, but it’s been a pretty special journey so far.”
With Dunne showing his talent consistently in F2, rumours have been flying regarding a potential F1 race seat for 2026. While no official statements have been made to this point, Dunne has been linked to a number of teams.
Speaking to a crowd of adoring Irish fans, David Coulthard posed the question “which” team Dunne would be driving for. While the young Irishman remained tight-lipped about his future in F1, he hinted towards further FP1 outings later this year.
“I think, at the minute, my guess is probably as good as everyone else’s,” Dunne replied. “I think, to be honest, at the moment I’m not really sure. I wish I knew a little bit more. I think, for me, I’ve always said to myself that I think the most important thing is to focus on F2.
“I’ve always said that I think to give myself the best opportunity at being an F1 driver, the way I’m going to do that is by winning F2, and I think that’s the goal. I can say that there is going to be maybe one or two more FP1s coming up in the year, and I think they’re a good opportunity to show that I should be in F1, but I think of when I’m going to have a race seat, yet I don’t know.”
Former McLaren F1 driver David Coulthard, reflecting on his time in Formula 1, then asked Dunne about the experience of driving modern F1 machinery. Coulthard recalled his time in the sport before the introduction of complex modern turbo hybrid power units.
Dunne explained his surprise at the sheer amount of control the driver has over the car from the cockpit. Alex Dunne reflected on making changes to the cars setup on the fly from corner to corner throughout a lap.
“There’s definitely a lot of things to think about when driving an F1 car,” he explained. “I think when I first jumped in, and in my first test, I was, you know, pretty amazed at the amount of things you can change, and look at, and do, you know, not even during a run, almost during a lap as well.
“I think, for example, during my FP1 in Austria, through my push laps, for turn three and turn four, I was opening and closing the diff, and then changing the brake bias, and kind of manipulating what the balance is doing, just from little toggles on the steering wheel.
“So there’s a lot of things you can do that, you know, not only change the modes, and give the team more data for whatever they’re looking at in the garage, but then there’s also various different setup items on the steering wheel that you can then change to manipulate the car to help you as a driver as well.”
Delving further into his FP1 outing, Dunne was asked if his late push lap had been pre-planned before the session. The McLaren junior admitted his push lap was not initially in the run plan.
“So, the actual plan for the session was never to have, not necessarily the opportunity,” he explained. “But we never planned to go out and set a representative lap time, let’s say. and I think if you look at the run plan, and when we debriefed after, the fact that I was able to do a good lap time was pretty crazy.
“I think usually in Austria, you’ll do out push on a set of new soft tyres, and after that, then they’ll degrade, and you won’t have the same performance anymore, and I think I did my lap on lap four or five on the same set of tyres, and we hadn’t really planned to do a proper push lap, so I think that was more impressive than anything else, the fact that there was still enough performance left in it.
“But no, it was never really the goal of the session, to be honest, it was just, I had a couple of push laps consecutively, and I just pushed as hard as I could, pretty much.”
