Formula 2 championship leader Alex Dunne took his first pole position in the series at Monaco on Friday afternoon, beating Victor Martins by just 0.003 seconds. The Rodin Motorsport driver had been involved in an incident with Rafael Villagómez early on that ended the Mexican’s session but recovered to blitz the second group of qualifying and eclipse Martins’ time. 

By Martin Lloyd

The collision proved to be the only blot on Dunne’s Monaco qualifying copybook. He was imperious in the 12 minutes of the session completed after the red flags were waved for his incident with Villagómez. Neither driver received a penalty after following a post-race investigation by the stewards.

While Dunne beat Martins by only three thousandths of a second, his closest Group B competitor, Leonardo Fornaroli, was a whopping 0.546s back for his best lap around the 3.337-kilometre street circuit. 

In the unique Monaco qualifying format, the 11 even-numbered cars in Group A took to the circuit for the first 15 minutes. Martins, like Dunne in Group B, was comfortably the fastest driver in Group A. His best lap of a 1:21.145 put him 0.375s above the next quickest driver, Richard Verschoor. That came after Martins went 0.616s clear of the field in free practice on Thursday with a 1:21.715.

“I thought it was going to be pretty difficult to beat what Victor did,” Dunne said. “Coming from practice as well and how fast he was, he was six tenths clear of P2 in practice, I thought the pole was going to go to Victor and then it was going to be a fight for second.”

The McLaren junior said his pole position lap, set in the closing moments of the session, ‘wasn’t the cleanest’.

“There were a couple of little mistakes in there, but that’s Monaco. To put a perfect lap together in Monaco is always going to be difficult.”

Martins had set the early Group A benchmark of 1:21.792 with 8:52 remaining in the 16-minute session. Even after he had aborted a lap with six minutes to go in the session when he cut the Nouvelle Chicane, the ART Grand Prix driver remained 0.291s clear of Arvid Lindblad in second place. 

A few minutes later, Martins was briefly overhauled by Lindblad and then Verschoor, who set a lap time of 1:21.520 with 3:28 left in the session, but the Frenchman swiftly returned to first place with 2:15 remaining. His group-topping lap time of 1:21.145 was 0.375 seconds clear of Verschoor in second place, and so began the agonising wait to see if any Group B driver would eclipse him. 

Before any fast times had been set in Group B, the red flags were waved. Dunne had been searching for optimal track position at the end of his warm-up lap and he did not want to be too close to Villagómez as he headed into his first flying attempt. The Irishman made an ambitious move on the inside of Villagómez at the final corner, Antony Noghès, and Villagómez steered into the barrier with limited space while Dunne continued on. 

After the session, both drivers were summoned to the stewards, who decided the incident warranted no further action four and a half hours after the session ended. The stewards said that “Car 17 [Dunne] was too optimistic by trying to overtake Car 25 [Villagómez] at Turn 19 but also noted the unpredictable driving of Car 25 between turns 18 and 19.” 

Once the session resumed, Dunne was clearly one of the quickest drivers on the circuit. With 5:32 remaining, he set the first time in Group B under the 1:22 mark, with a 1:21.781, remarkably similar to Martins’ initial effort. He then improved to a 1:21.437 on his penultimate effort before stunning with a 1:21.142 after the chequered flag fell to beat Martins by three thousandths. 

Sebastián Montoya’s late spin exiting La Piscine brought out the yellow flags at the end of the session and meant that drivers behind him, including Luke Browning, were unable to improve.

In the post-session press conference, Dunne revealed that his steering wheel dashboard showed he was four thousandths slower than Martins. His Rodin team then told him that live timing showed his lap time was faster. 

The near-total absence of high-speed corners in Monaco means that tyres degrade at a much slower rate than at other circuits, so drivers can set multiple fast laps consecutively without having to worry about overheating their tyres. The nature of the circuit coupled with the Monaco qualifying format, in which each group is on track for only 16 minutes, meant that most drivers stayed on track for the entire session rather than pitting partway through as they would usually do at other circuits.

“I probably feel more comfortable in qualifying sessions like this,” Dunne told Feeder Series. “In normal weekends you can go out, and the general thing for run one of a normal weekend is push-cool-push or three pushes, whatever it may be. 

“Sometimes you can do a really good job on run one, and then you come back in, you pit and you go back out again. And once you go back out again, unless there’s a red flag, whatever you’ve done on run one, realistically, is pointless.”

Thanks to Dunne’s pole time, drivers from Group B will line up in the odd-numbered grid positions for the feature race. Martins’ group will start in the even-numbered grid spots. That means that although Group A’s Verschoor, Lindblad, Gabriele Minì and Kush Maini were all quicker than Leonardo Fornaroli, they will start behind the Italian.

Behind Dunne and Martins on the feature race grid will be Fornaroli, with Verschoor fourth for MP Motorsport. The fact that Montoya’s spin caused a yellow rather than red flag means he keeps his fastest lap time, good enough for fifth. Lindblad is sixth, ahead of Jak Crawford and Minì in seventh and eighth respectively.

Browning and Maini, who qualified ninth and 10th, will form the front row for Saturday’s 30-lap sprint race.

Imola polesitter Dino Beganovic endured a difficult session. He was already struggling to match the pace of the frontrunners in Group A before he missed the braking point at Sainte Dévote on his final lap and entered the run-off area, restricting him to a lowly 18th on the grid. Campos driver Pepe Martí, currently sixth in the standings, also took to the run-off in Group B and will start the feature race 15th. 

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency