Rodin Motorsport’s Alex Dunne took his second pole position of the 2025 Formula 2 season on Friday at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in dominant fashion, finishing more than four tenths clear of Ritomo Miyata and Roman Staněk in second and third places respectively. 

By Martin Lloyd 

Having already topped practice by 0.399 seconds, Dunne seemed imperious from the very start of Friday afternoon’s session at Spa, which was unaffected by the morning fog that had pushed F3’s qualifying session to this evening. His final pole margin of 0.419s told of his clear pace advantage over the field.

Dunne spoke to Feeder Series at the post-qualifying press conference about how the session felt from inside the cockpit.

“I felt pretty confident the whole day, to be honest,” Dunne said. “I knew coming out of FP and after that first lap in quali. After my first lap in quali I said to myself ‘If I’m not on pole I’d be more surprised than if I was’. I knew the pace was really strong. The car has been in a very good place all day, which is always a very important thing. 

“When you come to a weekend and the car is straight away in the window and where you want it to be, it means you can invest more time to focus more on the driving side and you can make yourself go quicker rather than scratching your head and finding out where you can find pace in the car.”

When the session started, each of the drivers took two laps to warm up their tyres before beginning their first flying laps, and initially Dunne’s advantage was small. He was just three thousandths clear of Invicta Racing’s Leonardo Fornaroli after the first laps, setting a benchmark of 1:58.340 with 21:24 remaining in the session.

After a cooldown lap, Dunne showed his hand for the first time, going four tenths quicker than any other driver with a 1:57.863 with 16:43 to go. 

Fornaroli had also marginally improved, but he was now 0.421s behind his Irish rival. Fornaroli’s fellow Italian Gabriele Minì was third, a further 0.134 back, with ART’s Victor Martins fourth and Staněk fifth.

Dunne’s rivals therefore faced a daunting proposition as they waited in the pit lane to start their final runs. They had a huge gap to overcome even before they took into account Dunne’s potential to improve further. 

The drivers’ fears were realised with 2:22 remaining in the session. Dunne set a stunning lap time of a 1:57.151, briefly streaking more than 0.7s clear of the remainder of the field. Most other drivers improved too, but once again, no competitor could come within four tenths of the McLaren junior’s lap time. 

“The team has done a very, very good job,” Dunne added. “We were purple in all three sectors, which means we got the good combination of being quick in sector 1 and sector 2. I’ve been confident all day,.I feel like I’m driving at a very good level at the minute, so I’m very, very happy.” 

Ritomo Miyata was Dunne’s closest challenger, achieving his best-ever F2 qualifying with second place. The Japanese driver has finally unlocked the qualifying pace in his ART, which has been evidenced by teammate Martins’ incredible qualifying form throughout the season.

He spoke to Feeder Series about how the lack of track time before qualifying has constrained his performance. Super Formula, in which Miyata won the 2023 championship in his third full season, has a 90-minute practice session before qualifying. 

“It’s very difficult because FP is 45 minutes,” Miyata said. “We can’t do many laps because the tyres are only [able to do] one or two laps of push. Quali is only one push.

“This season, I had some issues in quali, especially at Silverstone. I have the confidence; the team has the confidence. It happened before the push lap and I couldn’t do any laps.

“It’s always like this, but if there is not some reason, we can do full push and full performance, that’s why today we finished P2. For sure, [we’re] missing something from pole, but it was better than before. We always try to do [our] best performance, but in F2 it’s always difficult.”

Staněk was six thousandths behind Miyata in third, giving the Czech driver a platform to continue a strong run of form that included consecutive sprint race podiums in Spielberg and Silverstone. Martins was fourth, a further 12 thousandths back and 0.437s behind Dunne, ahead of the Campos pair of Arvid Lindblad and Pepe Martí.

Fornaroli dropped to seventh, eventually finishing 0.561 behind Dunne, but could take solace in having qualified ahead of fellow championship competitors Richard Verschoor and Luke Browning. The pair were 11th and 12th respectively, with Browning qualifying outside the top 10 and thus missing out on the reversed grid for the second consecutive event. Jak Crawford, currently second in the points, qualified only 14th.

Minì wound up eighth, ahead of Dunne’s Rodin teammate Amaury Cordeel in ninth at his home race. Red Bull junior Oliver Goethe qualified 10th and will start on pole for the sprint race after qualifying in the top 10 for just the second time this season. 

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency