Alex Dunne on his 2024 season: Clear speed but lacking consistency

2024 was not the season Alex Dunne had been hoping for. The MP Motorsport driver was honest reflecting on an up and down rookie campaign, though a late-season upswing in form was evidence of his capabilities in Formula 3.

Looking back on the campaign overall, Dunne says that he was aiming higher, but that the performances of Spa-Francorchamps and Monza in particular were huge positives.

“In terms of what I should be achieving, I think it was a little bit under where I wanted to be,” the MP driver admitted. “I think there were a lot of things in the season that were out of my control, which didn’t help. But definitely it was a more difficult season than I’ve had in recent years.

“I think that one thing that was nice for me was to finish the season on a high note. We had a difficult year pretty much the whole way through. Sometimes we were strong and then sometimes we missed a bit, or things went slightly wrong.

“We missed a bit of pace as a team, but I think to finish the season on a high note was the best ending, and I got one of the best seats in the house for the Championship fight.

“I think I came away from the season showing what I’m capable of and that the potential is there, but naturally as a driver, I wasn’t happy with the result.”

Coming into F3 as a rookie, Dunne was fresh from title triumphs in lower categories but found he didn’t hit the ground running as quickly as he’d hoped.

That was down to Qualifying he says, as the format of the Pole Position shootout meant that the importance of a banker lap became clearer as his season went on.

“It was difficult. There were a lot of times, the main ones happening in Monte Carlo and Budapest, where the pace was really strong, but when I was improving, I got caught out by a Red Flag.

“You can look at it and say that’s my own fault for not doing a lap straight away on the first push, but then at the same time, being a rookie and these being new tracks, it makes that very first push in Qualifying a little bit more difficult.

“That’s normal as a driver, to have that bit of progression through Qualifying and improving from one lap to the next. By the end, the laps I was on for were always really good, but sometimes those things went wrong.

“Coming from F4 and GB3 where I was always fighting at the front and fighting for wins, being up there in the Championship fight in those years, I think the start of this year made things a little bit difficult.”

“Ultimately, it was by far my best weekend of the year, everything went smoothly"

However, as he acclimatised to the Championship as the season wore on, Dunne says he finally hit his stride in the latter stages of the campaign.

Qualifying on the front row at Monza he says was a truer demonstration of where he’d been all year, but finally he’d been able to complete a session without any other interruptions that impacted upon his end result.

Still though, he’d had his sights set higher and was a bit disappointed to not convert a front row into a podium on Sunday.

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“Ultimately, it was by far my best weekend of the year, everything went smoothly, and I didn’t get impeded, I didn’t make a mistake on my lap, and everything was put together, and we put it on the front row. So that was nice.

“But coming out of the Feature Race, I was still disappointed. I was starting on the front row so I wanted to win, a podium at least would have been really nice.

“As a team though, we just missed a little bit of pace in that Feature Race in the beginning. I tried quite hard to keep the lead, and I had nothing to lose in the Championship so there was no point in dropping back and maybe finishing third at best.

“I was happy with how I raced, I think I had the lead for the first half of the race and had some good battles with the front guys, so overall as a whole, it was good to get a proper opportunity from start to finish.”

It’s no surprise then that Dunne says Qualifying is the biggest factor he learned to emphasise in 2024.

With his best weekends coming in Spa and Monza – where he qualified on the front row for both Feature Races - the Irish driver says pushing on immediately in the grid-setting sessions are hugely important in setting up the remainder of the race weekend.

"You have to do the one lap in Qualifying. You have to do the lap as good as you possibly can"

“Being a rookie, it’s been difficult, but I think in F3, no matter what happens, you have to do the one lap in Qualifying. You have to do the lap as good as you possibly can. Qualifying at Spa or the weekend in Monza – Qualifying is a massive thing in F3 and I think with it being so late in the season, Spa was the first time where from the start to the end of Qualifying, there were no mistakes.

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“I think I had a couple of times where my first push wasn’t a good lap, or I made a mistake or had traffic, and then further on in the session, I’d be on for a good lap but then catch the Red Flag. But not doing a lap early enough in Qualifying is my fault. So while sometimes you might get unlucky, you could also have done things slightly differently to get around it.

“I think mentally, I’m quite strong but I think at the beginning of the year, coming in from two years that had been so strong and fighting at the front – to have those difficult weekends in a row, not being as high up as I wanted to be, that’s not nice for a driver to experience.

“So, I think staying strong mentally and staying calm, just trying to do the best that I can was something I really had to try and focus on.”

Reflecting on that Monza weekend in more depth, Dunne picks it out as his finest in F3 across his rookie campaign.

The MP driver battled at the front in the Feature Race and while he ultimately couldn’t convert that front row into a podium finish, he says he felt very positive about his and the team’s speed on a weekend where they had consistency to go with their pace.

“To do a good job in F3, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, you just need to stay in sequence and if you maximise as a driver, you’ll be at the front.

“So then in Monza, to qualify on Pole in my group and then have two solid results – to be on the front row for both of those weekends, to have that bit of consistency that started to come a little bit more, we had it.

“We had a good plan, nothing got in our way, and we were able to do the right thing from start to finish, so to have that consistency to go along with the pace being really strong was nice.”