“The goal is Formula 1” – meet McLaren’s rising F2 star Alex Dunne

Life has come at Alex Dunne pretty fast. Just 12 months on from being taken into McLaren’s young driver programme, halfway through a largely anonymous F3 campaign, the 19-year-old Irishman is fighting for the F2 title and made his grand prix weekend debut with the reigning world champions – impressing every step of the way.

Hailing from Offaly, a sparsely populated county in the heart of the republic, the 2022 British F4 champion has been fully thrust into the limelight as he climbs the junior ladder towards his F1 dream.

“Things have happened pretty quickly, especially with how it’s turned around from last year,” Dunne reflected. “One thing that I’m proud of is the fact that even when things were difficult, I just tried my best to stay calm and confident and try and continue on working on what I knew I was capable of. This year kind of shows that it’s back to normal. I’m very, very happy with the opportunities that McLaren have given me and, also, with how F2 is going as well.”  

Even his much more successful 2025 season hasn’t gone without the odd setback. Dunne lost his F2 points lead in Monaco after triggering an 11-car pile-up at the start of the feature race, which led to a torrent of vile online abuse that made him take a temporary break from social media.

That incident is firmly in the rear-view mirror as he regained his F2 lead in Barcelona and then set the fourth-fastest time in F1’s Austrian opening practice, maturely completing his run plan to hand the MCL39 over to Lando Norris in a good place.

“I think that’s just motorsport, to be honest. You can be on a high for so long and things can be going really well, and if you make one small mistake, everyone complains. And when you do something right, everyone’s your best friend,” Dunne said.

“Social media, unfortunately, isn’t the nicest thing in the world. As a driver, you just have to ignore it. Quite often, the people that like to talk on social media aren’t the ones that have relevant opinions. But I’m glad that when we went back to Barcelona, and then now this weekend with FP1, I did all my talking on the track.”

F1’s unlimited capabilities 

Dunne was clearly well prepared for the occasion with a combination of private testing in McLaren’s 2023 car and simulator work, but he still had to pinch himself as he got his maiden grand prix outing under way for an hour’s work that team boss Andrea Stella labelled “nothing short of impressive.”

“At the beginning of the session when I was queued up waiting for the light to go green, and I was sat there behind Lewis Hamilton, that was pretty cool,” he smiled. “It was very, very special for me to see all stands full of fans while I was on track. It was an extremely special moment for me and one that I’ll remember forever.

“To be honest, jumping into F1 from F2 for FP1 wasn’t actually that difficult,” he said about his run. “The step up is definitely much easier than it was to step back down. Of course, there are different driving styles from one to the other, but because the F1 car has so much grip, it kind of feels like the car has unlimited capabilities.

Alexander Dunne, McLaren

Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images

“I felt much more confident and comfortable than what I would have expected. We were trying numerous different things to collect data for when Lando jumped back in, and in the qualifying run I wasn’t actually on new softs.

“A lot of that comes from the fact of how well McLaren have prepared me. A lot of the stuff I’ve done in testing and on the sim, and Lando and Oscar [Piastri] helped me a little bit as well. The ultimate goal wasn’t to go out and be fast… but I’m happy that I was!”

He can already tell that his close affiliation with F1’s title winning squad has made him a better driver, especially given the lack of in-season testing in F2. “The more integrated I’ve been, the more I’ve learned and developed as a driver,” he explained.

“Even the sim sessions I did before I’d even driven an F1 car, after I left them and I went back to racing in F2, straight away I felt like a better driver. I get to do different things with McLaren to sort out things as a driver.”

With both Norris and Piastri locked down on long-term contracts, there’s no obvious path for Dunne into a full-time F1 seat. He is currently also McLaren’s reserve driver in Formula E, testing in Berlin next month, but the company has previously announced it will withdraw from the all-electric series after the current season.

But with an F2 title on the line,  Dunne vows to remain focused on the job at hand before worrying about his next steps. He has his work cut out after losing the points lead to Richard Verschoor in Austria, a gap widened when he was disqualified from the feature race for technical reasons.

“All of that is out of my control,” he said about his future. “If I get the opportunity to do it again, my main goal is to just make sure I do a good job. And also, in F2, to make sure that I continue the form that I’m on at the minute and hopefully win the championship at the end of the year. I think that’s all I can focus on.

“For me, still the goal is Formula 1. If I continue to do a good job, then hopefully the opportunity in F1 will come.”