MP Motorsport Formula 3 driver Alex Dunne scored points on his championship debut in Bahrain off the back of finishing second in the GB3 Championship last year and starring in the F3 World Cup in Macau. At the next F3 round in Melbourne, he told Feeder Series about what he wants to achieve in 2024.

By Tori Turner

The first round of the 2024 F3 Championship saw 17 rookie drivers take to the track for the first time, including Ireland’s Alex Dunne, who was a late addition to MP Motorsport’s line-up.

Dunne was not alone in making the move up from GB3, with several other competitors also joining him from the British single-seater series – most notably title rival and eventual champion Callum Voisin, who found a seat at Rodin Motorsport alongside fellow GB3 rival Joseph Loake.

He refused to let old faces faze him on his debut, telling Feeder Series that he ‘hasn’t paid much too much attention’ to his fellow drivers.

“I think making the step with them doesn’t really make much of a difference,” he said.

Dunne has instead focused more on adjusting to the Dallara F3 2024, which is significantly different from the Tatuus MSV-022 used in GB3. He believed he had ‘adapted pretty well and pretty quick.’ he told Feeder Series.

“There’s a lot more downforce, a lot more power. I think one of the biggest things is the braking. You can really attack and press the brake a lot harder than what you do in GB3.”

Points in Bahrain

Dunne secured 14th on the grid for both races during his first qualifying session, missing out on the reverse-grid positions by 0.171 seconds. Whilst he made up two positions in the sprint race on Friday, he found himself just out of reach of any points.

The feature race on Saturday was where Dunne shone despite the fact he lost positions on the opening lap.

Having recovered from 16^th to 13^th in the first two laps and made the move on Jenzer’s Max Esterson – another former GB3 rival – on lap six, Dunne maintained 12th until the closing stages.

After passing Laurens van Hoepen for 11th on lap 16 of 22, he found himself fighting against other drivers for the last points-paying position. The pass finally came on lap 20 where he overtook Nikola Tsolov, Fernando Alonso’s protégé and Alpine Academy driver, on the inside line at Turn 8.

By also overtaking returning F3 driver Oliver Goethe on the final lap, Dunne doubled his points tally from the weekend.

“The race pace was very strong. We still scored some points in the feature race after being [16th] at the end of lap one,” he said about the feature race. “In a weekend like this, to still finish P9 and score some points, I think isn’t too bad.”

But he admitted his performances could have been stronger.

“Bahrain didn’t really go to plan. There was a couple of things that didn’t really fall into place, but we know why that happened,” Dunne said.

His specific weakness, he said, was qualifying, which he called “the biggest factor of the weekend”.

“In the first race weekend, it is what we struggled with,” he said. “If you qualify outside of the top 12, your weekend is more or less over, realistically. Of course, you can still make up some places and score some good points, but it’s going to be very difficult.”

Support from home

Unlike nearby countries, Ireland has a much more limited presence across motorsports, something Dunne recognises. Being the only Irish-licenced driver to race in a support series to F1 this season, he feels a sense of pride to be representing his home country.

“As I’ve gotten older and gone through the ranks a bit more, the support’s become more and more,” he said. “Seeing all the fans come to all the races is pretty cool.”

Dunne’s first and only single-seater championship to date came in 2022 in British F4. He amassed 11 wins and took the title despite missing a round.

A runner-up position in Italian F4 that same season only burnished his reputation, as did his finishing behind Mercedes junior Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who has been mentioned for a possible promotion to F1 in 2025.

A standout performance in last year’s Macau Grand Prix, the first time he ran competitively in his current F3 machinery, saw Dunne rise from sixth to second in the qualifying race on the Saturday. His run in the main race at Macau came to a premature end when he crashed at the Lisboa corner on the opening lap.

“I think the performance of Macau was pretty good. Unfortunately, for race two, it wasn’t as good. But I think, it was still good to show what I’m capable of.”

Dunne impressed many people at Macau, including GT World Cup winner and 2013 European F3 champion Raffaele Marciello. The Irishman told Feeder Series that his performances in the grand prix may have had some influence on MP Motorsport’s choice to sign him for F3, a move that ended his two-year partnership with Hitech GP.

Going forward

Speaking ahead of qualifying for the Australian F3 round, Dunne seemed unfazed by the prospect of learning a new track in a day. For the 18-year-old, it’s all part of an F3 journey centred on holistic improvement.

“There’s always an area you could improve on, even if you feel like you don’t need to. So I think just as a whole, just try and improve on everything and it should be good,” he said.

“I’ll just keep chipping away at it and doing my best.”

His race weekend would later be overshadowed by an incident in practice with Tsolov wherein the ART Grand Prix driver made an aggressive manoeuvre that pitched him into the barriers. Tsolov received a three-place grid penalty as a result.

Having qualified 17th, Dunne made up eight positions in Saturday’s sprint race. He would later be promoted to seventh after Dino Beganovic and Nikita Bedrin received post-race penalties. He placed 16th in Sunday’s feature race.

He continued to show improvement in an in-season test in Barcelona. He placed comfortably within the top 10 for four of the six sessions, with a best result of fourth in the first day’s morning session.

F3 heads to Imola for its third round next weekend. Dunne has a strong track record around the Italian circuit, taking a win and two podiums in the three Italian F4 races there in 2022. In F3 post-season testing there in October 2023, he notably topped the timesheets in the second day’s wet afternoon session on what was his only full day in the car.

Additional reporting by Steven Walton, Daniele Spadi and Michael McClure

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency