It's been an impressive rise thus far for Offaly's Alex Dunne but the biggest step of his young racing career is ahead of him next weekend.
The 18-year-old has earned himself a seat on the F3 grid for 2024. Formula 3 serves as a feeder series to F1, and the championship also serves as a support series to the pinnacle of motorsport, meaning all ten rounds will take place on the undercard of Formula 1 Grands Prix.
F3 is a hugely positive step for Dunne, who has caught the eye in just about every junior championship he has taken part in thus far. The 2022 GB3 runner-up is ready to take the opportunity with both hands, and one hopes the added exposure a global championship will bring will only aid him in catching the eye of teams even higher up the ladder.
Ahead of his jetting off for the first F3 race next weekend, we caught up with Alex this week to get the lowdown on how the F3 opportunity came about - and to get an update on his aspirations of one day reaching Formula 1.
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Alex Dunne relishing the fresh challenge of Formula 3
Irish motorsport fans and avid followers of junior series around the world will have been aware of Dunne for quite some time now but perhaps the moment that launched awareness of his precocious talent to a larger audience was the Macau Grand Prix late last year.
Among the most prestigious races in motorsport, the F3 race has been won by the likes of Michael Schumacher and Ayrton Senna in years gone by, and Dunne shone on a frankly sensational debut race weekend in a Formula 3 car.
Alex Dunne P2 in Macau GP Qualifying Race!
He will now start on the front row for the FIA F3 World Cup Race tomorrow pic.twitter.com/1Z83s7bMt3— Motorsport Ireland (@MotorsportIRL) November 18, 2023
He finished second in the qualifying race and, though the main GP came to a disappointing end at the first corner, he announced himself on one of motorsport's biggest stages. Dunne tells us that the "crazy" experience surpassed even his own expectations:
Going into Macau, to be honest, I don’t think I expected to do as well as I did. It was quite a last-minute thing and I didn’t have a whole load of experience in the car.
I’d never driven a street track before either, so I said to my dad that, come qualifying 2, if I was knocking on the door or even in the top ten I’d have been pretty happy. The fact that I finished second in the first race, I was kind of in shock.
That was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Macau was a pretty crazy track, I’ve never experienced anything like that before in my life, especially in an F3 car as well.
Dunne's appearance in Macau came after he was invited to take part in the Formula 3 post-season test at Imola last October. That was his very first time stepping into an F3 car - and he topped the timing sheets in a wet afternoon session on day two by over a second. No wonder he got that shot at Macau.
Despite his impressive performances at both Imola and Macau, Dunne was left waiting until just under a month ago to finally secure his seat on the Formula 3 grid for 2024.
Presenting: MP’s Formula 3 and Formula 2 class of 2024 📸🧡 pic.twitter.com/9oUZGMuUUp
— MP Motorsport (@OfficialMPteam) February 21, 2024
MP Motorsport offered him a seat alongside fellow rookies Tim Tramnitz and Kacper Sztuka (both of whom Alex Dunne has been teammates to during early campaigns of his junior career). The opportunity to drive in F3 was a late call, and one which Dunne was relieved to see come through:
Even after Macau, I thought there was no chance I was going to do F3.
Everything was last minute - it was confirmed that I was doing the F3 test in the middle of the last round of GB3. I went straight from there to Imola. The Imola test went very, very well of course. We found out that we were doing Macau a week before the race.
Then we found out we were doing F3 a month or so before the test. There really wasn’t a whole lot of process about it, to be honest. It was a pretty last-minute thing. It was really only decided towards the end of January.
I was even amazed myself that we managed to get to F3. Especially with the money situation, F3 is so expensive and it’s so hard to get here in the first place. The fact that we managed to get the support to tie it all together, I was amazed at that in the first place
It’s all been pretty last minute but I’m really happy that it all worked out. In the end, I ended up in the position I wanted to be in.
Dunne has been in contention for almost every championship he has entered at junior level, and 2022 saw him win the British F4 championship in the same year he finished runner-up in the Italian championship.
Last year, he competed in the British GB3 championship - something of a midpoint between F4 and F3 - and finished a close second in the standings.
🚨NEW RECORD POINTS HAUL ALERT🚨
We've gone back through the archives, and Alex Dunne's massive haul of 95 points at @circuitspa is a new record for a three-race event since the introduction of the current points structure back in 2018.
👏 @alexdunneracing pic.twitter.com/NTmM5U7l7y— GB3 Championship (@GB3Championship) June 5, 2023
He says that the step up to Formula 3 cars has been tricky but that his experience in GB3 helped him. He pinpoints braking as the biggest learning curve he has experienced so far in F3 cars, saying, "in the majority of the heavy braking zones, you pretty much hit it as hard as your leg physically can."
Another challenge this year for Dunne will be the new tracks he will have to become accustomed to. There will be three in the first four races - though he says it is helpful that the first race will take place at the same track as pre-season testing, where he got a chance to get to grips with the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir.
That test took place last week, with Alex Dunne seeking to get to grips with his new car, new team, and a new track. An enormous challenge for a driver, even if the weather was clear.
So, naturally, just as in Imola, he went fastest overall on a day marked by heavy rain. Some going.
He has an idea where his affinity for driving in the wet is, no doubt after hours spent racing in rainy conditions on karting circuits closer to home in his early career:
It must have something to do with being from Ireland! I don’t know what it is but I’ve always enjoyed the rain.
I think in mixed conditions, if it’s damp or half-wet-half-dry, I’ve always enjoyed those conditions. I seem to adapt to them pretty well. I just feel comfortable in the car and enjoy those conditions so I guess it suits me.
An F4 champion with a lightning Macau GP under his belt and impressive testing times to boot means that Alex Dunne arrives in Formula 3 as a hotly-anticipated prospect.
His team, MP Motorsport, took third place in the teams' championship in 2023, winning three races along the way. Dunne says that he believes the pace is there in this year's car to challenge for silverware, but he understands the importance of consistent results if a championship bid is to be realistic:
If the test is anything to go by, the speed is there or thereabouts. I would say that we were pretty much in the top five for the majority of the test. The pace is there.
Things can change, people in testing can be sandbagging and all that kind of stuff. Going into a race weekend, you don’t really know until qualifying. At least within the team, the pace was pretty good.
I don’t see why we wouldn’t be fighting at the sharp end but, of course, I’m a rookie and the other two guys in the team are rookies as well. We’ll have to wait and see, but I’ll just do the best I can, pick up the points when you can.
In this championship, it’s really important to not have a win one weekend and then no points the next weekend. It’s better off to just be consistent throughout. If I can do that, we should be there or thereabouts.
This is the third time I have spoken with Alex Dunne. The first occasion was in 2021, in the afterglow of his very first weekend ever racing cars (naturally, he took pole position at one of motorsport's most famous tracks Spa-Francorchamps). He said then that his dream was to get to Formula 1.
When I spoke to him in 2022, just before his triumph in British F4, Dunne said that, in an ideal world, the plan would be GB3 in 2023, F3 in 2024, F2 in 2025, before taking the big step up to F1.
It's all gone to plan so far but the toughest steps are ahead. Dunne has done extremely well to get to F3 this quickly but is under no illusions as to the challenges he will face on the global stage.
Nonetheless, one never gets a sense that these types of things are daunting to the Offaly man. The first time I spoke to him, I was delighted to learn that Dunne was a fellow admirer of Sebastian Vettel. This week I ask him if he has been keeping tabs on any other drivers on the grid in the time since Vettel's retirement after the 2022 season.
His answer speaks volumes about where he sees himself in a few years:
I’m kind of at the level now where I’m not necessarily a massive “fan” of the drivers in F1. Of course, there’s drivers you look at as very, very talented and at the top of their game.
I’m at the age now where I’d rather be racing against them than be a fan.
Fingers crossed we'll see Alex Dunne there before too long.
The first race weekend of the F3 season takes place next weekend in Bahrain. The sprint race takes place on Friday March 1st at 10:15 Irish time, with the feature race at 9am the following day. Both races will be live on Sky Sports F1.
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