McLaren Formula 1 young driver Alex Dunne had to remove social media from his phone after a torrent of online abuse following his first lap clash in Monaco, with team boss Andrea Stella praising his "genuine" response.
The current Formula 2 championship leader clashed with Williams junior Victor Martins at the first corner on the opening lap of the Monaco feature race, triggering a multi-car pile-up and earning himself a hefty 10-place grid penalty for Barcelona’s sprint race.
Dunne’s weekend was made trickier with a further three-place grid drop for both races for hitting the back of Martins in the pit entry during Friday practice.
But he stormed back to second place in style in Saturday’s Barcelona sprint race from 19th on the grid, taking advantage of safety car timing to climb through the field on soft tyres, finishing just behind race winner Richard Verschoor.
Dunne apologised for the practice incident over the radio after finishing the race, and called his part in it “completely ridiculous” in the post-race podium press conference.
“I don’t think there’s any point in me commenting on Monaco really, what happened, happened,” Dunne said when asked by The Race if he’d change his approach after the Monaco incident and how McLaren has helped him.
“But I think moving forward, it’s clear in these scenarios, maybe sometimes you just need to rein it back a bit.
“Everyone knows Monaco Turn 1, if you come out in the lead, the chance of you finishing there is pretty high. I think it was just one of those things. I think moving forward, to just bring it back in again is all that needs to be done; nothing massive needs to change.
“We’ve won two feature races at this point because we’ve done a lot of things right, we’ve done more things right than we have done wrong. So there are a couple of little things to work on, but that’s natural, and I know what they are.
“Everyone around me is still pushing me on, McLaren and the team are still fully behind me and happy with how I’m doing. So yeah, couple of things to change but should be fine.”
Dunne was then asked about the criticism he received after Monaco and whether charging from 19th to second silenced those critics.
“I got a lot of stuff after Monaco, normally I’m not someone who reads things and gets annoyed by them,” Dunne replied.
“But, I think an hour after the race, I deleted social media off my phone because I’ve ever received such bad messages in my life.
“A lot of the stuff I got was really, really bad and quite upsetting to be honest. But you know, I think...”
The 19-year-old’s answer stopped there as he was visibly emotional recalling what was clearly a distressing experience, with the press conference rightly moving onto different topics.
McLaren ‘proud’ of Dunne’s response
Dunne joined McLaren’s driver development programme in May last year and has quickly become the F1 team’s top driving asset outside of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.
McLaren supported Dunne after the Monaco abuse, with team principal Stella praising Dunne’s response to one of the most difficult moments of his career so far.
“Alex is doing very well, he’s a very fast driver, very talented, and the situation he had in Monaco was one of those situations where you can learn a lot,” Stella said when asked by The Race how McLaren supported him.
“If we think, multiple world champions they went through situations that were very important to finetune the way they go racing.
“We had good conversations with Alex to reaffirm our complete support to his talent, to the championship he’s fighting for. We always see a very mature person. The way he raced today, the way he managed to overtake cars in a very clean way in the first lap, stay calm and see how the situation would have evolved, and capitalise when the opportunity came, was an immediate response to the situation he had in Monaco, and the pressure that came from these social media comments, for me that’s something that makes me very proud of him.
F2 standings (top five)
Alex Dunne - 76
Luke Browning - 72
Richard Verschoor - 69
Leonardo Fornaroli - 65
Jak Crawford - 61
“I think it was genuine. I think we need to realise that we live in a difficult world in which people can attack people really with no foundation, sometimes no competence, so we’re completely behind Alex, not only on track but also off-track from this point of view.
“I just felt a little bit for him, but I also felt very proud of him in showing his reaction, being genuine, natural - but for me [I want to make] a call to our sense of responsibility overall. Even you guys that have the pen, we need to make sure in anything we do, that we try to avoid situations that can be too controversial - not referring to the situation with Alex, not referring to what was written in the media, I know what was written in the comments.
“But just a sense of responsibility is the main call I would like to make.”
Dunne’s future
Dunne’s second-place finish moved him into the lead of the F2 championship, one he’s leading as a rookie after winning two of his first three F2 feature races - something only Robert Shwartzman has done in this era of F1’s second tier.
He’ll start Sunday’s feature race from eighth, having qualified fifth before his three-place grid penalty for the practice incident was applied.
His strong form will inevitably raise questions about his future, especially given that McLaren has Piastri and Norris locked down until at least the end of 2027.
“FP1 appearances, definitely they’re a possibility, [but] when it comes to thinking about his longer-term career or next year, this is a little early,” Stella said.
“We want to focus on the season, we have seen that we do have to stay focussed. Because Alex lost important points in Monaco - today, thanks to his qualities and a great strategy by his team, he managed to recover some of those points.
“I would say it’s not appropriate to talk about his career opportunities, maybe we can do it later on during the season and definitely the talks with Alex are ‘let’s stay completely focussed on cashing in on his qualities and talents’ and making sure he stays in the quest for the championship until the end.”
