While Alex Dunne only finished 14th in the championship in the 2024 F3 season, the Irishman displayed a lot of strong pace over the campaign.
Qualifying difficulties in Bahrain and Australia
Dunne qualified outside the top 10 at the first two events. He was not helped in Albert Park as ART’s Nikola Tsolov swiped him and put the MP Motorsport driver in the wall at the end of practice after unintentionally blocking him.
Nonetheless, the driver from Offaly produced some good recovery drives in the Bahrain Feature (P9) and Melbourne Sprint (P7) to score his first points in the championship.
Misfortune hurts his year
On the return to Europe for F3 in 2024, Dunne quickly established himself as a driver who could consistently fight in the top 10, even if the results did not necessarily show the full picture.
A disqualification at Imola when he put his car P5 on the grid for the Feature, yellow flags in the last seconds of Monaco qualifying left him out of the picture, and a mistake by the team at Silverstone left him down in 13th on the grid when he was P2 for most of the session.
In the Silverstone Sprint, he had made an aggressive but fair pass on Charlie Wurz. His team asked him to give the positions back. In the end the pair would have a collision on the Wellington straight, ending up with both out of the race as the Austrian squeezed him on the grass.
Errors from his side prove costly as well
While misfortune certainly played a big part in his campaign, the now 19-year-old hurt his own weekends as well.
A strong race at the Red Bull Ring in the Feature saw him finish P6 on the road as he stayed in the front group all race long. However, a 10-second penalty for gently hitting Arvid Lindblad up the rear into turn 3 during it meant he finished P10. The Brit’s exit was horribly compromised.
At Silverstone, a very dangerous re-join saw him pick up a 10-place grid penalty for the Hungarian round. Dunne got airborne after going off track on the entry to Wellington straight, keeping his foot planted and causing an accident between Floersch and Beganovic.
Strong pace does yield good results
Despite a lot of tough moments, Dunne did make history in the 2024 F3 season. He was the first Irish driver to stand on the podium, finishing P2 in the Barcelona Sprint. At one point he got very close to overtaking home hero Mari Boya for the victory.
Front row starts followed at Spa and Monza. The Italian round was his best of the year. He finished P3 in the Sprint and 4th in the Feature. In fact, he led in the early stages of the last race of the year. However, his MP Motorsport package was not quite fast enough to stay there.
20 points in the final round of 2024 moved him up to 14th in his only F3 season. He jumped ahead of Boya, Ramos and Montoya.
Dunne makes the step up to Formula 2
Last week it was confirmed that Alex Dunne will drive for Rodin Motorsport in F2 this year. On the basis of F2 post-season testing and his raw pace during his career to date, the Irishman can bring home good results. The question is: can he learn from his errors in F3? Time will tell.
