Judging a driver’s maiden Formula 1 practice outing is always tricky - but it’s hard not to be stunned by Formula 2 points leader Alex Dunne being within a tenth of McLaren regular Oscar Piastri in FP1 in Austria.
There are, of course, a tonne of variables - fuel loads, run plans, traffic, late-session spots of rain - that make drawing definitive conclusions from any practice session fraught.
But there are signs that present themselves in any future F1 star’s maiden on-track outing during a grand prix. The FP1 debuts of the likes of Max Verstappen, George Russell, Lando Norris (pictured below) and more recently Ollie Bearman were precursors, both in hindsight and at the time for those following closely enough, for what was to come.
A strong FP1 debut alone never guarantees an F1 future, but it can help an F1 team confirm that a driver is on the right path to one, far more than a single weekend in junior formula racing.
How good was Dunne's debut?
The final headline times are impressive. Dunne ended up with a 1m05.766s, just 0.069s slower than Piastri, with Dunne’s lap only coming slightly later in the session than Piastri’s.
That was despite Dunne’s session not getting properly underway until 25 minutes into the one-hour session, with his first two runs focussed on aero tests, with big aero rakes strapped to the car and a contained pace.
Then it was time for Dunne to “get some clean and get a feel for the car”, in the words of Lando Norris’s engineer Will Joseph, who was talking him through the session.
His first push lap on the hard tyres featured a huge snap into Turn 3 that required a big correction. That left him with a 1m08.520s. He then went over 1.3s quicker on his very next lap to get to a 1m07.196s.
Asked what he made of the front wing flap adjustment, Dunne said: “Pretty OK, I think, I’m not pushing the high-speed enough to tell completely yet, but if we put more in, I don’t think it would be an issue.”
Joseph told Dunne to focus on his exit from Turn 4 and another big improvement came on his third push lap of FP1 - this time, he got down to a 1m06.450s on hards, only just over a tenth slower than Piastri’s best effort on mediums.
Unprompted, Dunne then suggested on his outlap after that effort that the “car feels quite nice, but I think a little bit more flap will help”.
Joseph agreed and McLaren made the change before sending him out for his first soft-tyre run in F1.
It was clear from his onboard that Dunne was able to push immediately, using plenty of kerb through the final two corners and having the kind of commitment into the high-speed corners that hasn’t been present for some of the other FP1-only rookies in 2025 so far.
This did not look like a driver in his very first F1 weekend session in the slightest, nor a 19-year-old who was racing in Formula 4 two and a half years back.
Dunne's junior career
2021: Part-time in Spanish and German F4
2022: 6th in F4 UAE 2nd in Italian F4, British F4 champion
2023: 2nd in GB3
2024: 14th in FIA F3
2025: Leading FIA F2
Of course, there were the usual debutant things of at one stage incorrectly changing a steering wheel setting and a mid-session bathroom break request that had to be withdrawn.
But by the standards of a rookie Dunne was oozing confidence behind the wheel, and he then got the laptime to show it. He addressed feedback from Joseph - which included activating the DRS out of the final corner too late and his Turn 3 entry speed - and was even making suggestions for Joseph.
McLaren can take some credit for giving Dunne a proper late-session soft tyre run, in much the same way they did for Alex Palou’s FP1 bow in Austin 2023. Not every F1 team affords their FP1-only rookies that luxury.
But McLaren would only do so with a driver that it trusted - especially on such an important weekend for the driver (Lando Norris) of the MCL39 that he was taking.
How Dunne earned McLaren’s trust
Dunne earning an F1 bow before the summer break became an inevitability given the superb start to 2025 Dunne has enjoyed in F2 and behind the scenes at McLaren.
He’s impressed in his first steps in McLaren’s Testing of Previous Cars programme, having made his debut at Zandvoort last month at the wheel of McLaren’s MCL37 from 2023. It's very different conditions from an F1 practice session - there are no traffic issues and you're on very different Pirelli rubber - but it is a good test of a young driver.
Dunne's performance there - and in a later test in Austin - was crucial in McLaren entrusting him with its 2025 car and giving him the freedom to start to explore the limits of the car.
He blew every expectation that McLaren had for his rookie F2 season out of the water, too, winning two of the season’s first three feature races, and he’s demonstrated an immense raw speed across every weekend so far, making up 20 places on his grid positions across the two races last time out in Barcelona.
“He’s surpassed all my expectations already,” head of McLaren's driver development programme Warren Hughes told The Race ahead of Dunne’s FP1 bow.
“I give some soft targets at the beginning of the year to at least try to win a race, maybe top four in the championship. And he blew that out of the water very early on. It’s fantastic to see.
“He’s just adding layers onto his raw ability right now with the support from McLaren.
“You can see a difference in him since the start of the F1 involvement in the TPC programme, both in the car and on the sim, his driving and processing has taken another step.
“So it just seems to have evolved and got better and the capacity to analyse his own driving, which is impressive.”
That analytical strength was fully on display in Dunne’s FP1 debut.
When Joseph told him to “focus on exit speed, entry speed is too high in high-speed corners”, Dunne replied, “high-speed was just testing stuff, wasn’t on purpose”, and there was repeated evidence that Dunne could immediately act on Joseph’s feedback and suggestions.
It’s that kind of action, having just lapped within a tenth of Piastri, that marks Dunne out as a seriously exciting option for McLaren’s future, given everything he’s already shown in F2 and behind the scenes.
Of course there will be cries of 'but Norris and Piastri are both on medium-to-long term deals, where is the space?'. But drive this well right below F1 and you will break your way in regardless, with or without your current backer - as Piastri himself showed.
