“At the roundabout take the first exit for Clonbullogue, not the second. Continue for about 2km, until a slight curve and dip in the road, and the house is on the right.”
The directions Noel Dunne sends are a bit sketchy. Maybe not inadvertently so. If he’s opening his door for an interview with his son Alex, widely lauded as the fastest Irish racing car driver in decades, it’s only fair he gently tests my navigational skills behind the wheel.
A couple of U-turns later, Noel greets me at the gate. It wasn’t the fearsome Eau Rouge at Spa-Francorchamps but the curve was surely understated, even at my paltry speed. Not a great start off the grid.
Once I enter, a bright-eyed kid pops out from behind a door, and my first thought is this must be the younger brother. “Hello, I’m Alex,” he says, offering a solid handshake. He hardly looks 19, nor immediately fits the bill as a potential Formula One driver already well advanced in the making. But that’s definitely what he is.
He is leading the Formula Two championship, the tier just below F1, as it is about to reach the halfway mark at next weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix at Spielberg. When he won his debut F2 feature race in Bahrain in April, Amhrán na bhFiann was played out in the pitlane, and the entire circuit was asking: who is this Alex Dunne?
Turns out Alex has no brothers or sisters, and his fast and occasionally furious rise through the ranks of motorsport has been a mostly small, intimate family affair. Just without any of the vast family wealth typically associated with it.
Noel hails from Artane, Dublin, and raced cars competitively back in his day, as did his dad, Matthew. An electrician by trade, he humbly lists off some of his finer moments, twice winning the Irish Formula Ford F1600 series. Then, when asked what he considers as his greatest achievement, he points straight at Alex.
“Him!” Noel says. “I ran my own car, worked on it, did everything myself. Honestly, when he won his first race, a small club event, with no superstars there, watching him do that felt better than anything I achieved.”
Noel and Alex’s mother Elizabeth are separated, but remain on good terms, and she’s been similarly influential on the young driver’s career. She worked in Mondello Park, and homeschooled Alex when the decision was made to take him out of Newbridge College after first year as his karting career took off in the UK and then Europe.
It’s a Monday afternoon, a rare day off in his schedule, and after confirming we are in Co Offaly (“The first house inside the border,” Noel says), Alex sits on the kitchen counter, your typical undaunted teenager. He still lives at home with his dad, and doesn’t even drive a car when he’s in Ireland. Dressed in a T-shirt, sweatpants and socks, softly spoken and highly articulate, he slowly reveals the intensely competitive streak and self-confidence that are prerequisites for anyone driving to win at breakneck speeds around lethal corners.
In May last year, he was invited on to the McLaren Driver Development Programme, the British motorsport behemoths leading the F1 constructors’ championship and boasting the two top drivers in Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris. Both of whom, incidentally, come from wealthy families.
Last month, he got to test a McLaren F1 car at the Zandvoort seaside circuit in the Netherlands. In January he was named as reserve driver for McLaren’s Formula E team. If he continues to impress in F2, driving this season with Rodin Motorsport, promotion to F1 would appear to be the next logical step. But he’s under no illusions as to just how competitive a leap that is.
“It maybe looks like F2 is just a miniature version, but it terms of cars, it’s almost indescribable how different they are. People may not understand how big the gap is. For example, the last race we did in Barcelona, the pole lap for F1 versus F2 was about 15 seconds faster,” he says.
“The last corner at Barcelona, we could approach it at 200km/h, and we have to break through the corner. In F1 they approach it at 300km/h, and they don’t even lift [off the accelerator]. They’re much quicker than us through a straight line, way quicker through the corners, so it’s a very, very big jump.
“Okay, I always wanted to be an F1 driver. But I’ve never dwelled on it. Right now, I’m not that far away. But even if I win F2 this year, as a rookie, that doesn’t mean I’ll be an F1 driver. There are a lot of things that will have to go right that are out of my control.
“The whole thing now is not to focus too much on F1. The focus is on F2. I think the things I do right, I do very well. You do have to be patient. You don’t need to win every race. What we’re doing at the moment is pretty good, we just need to chip away.”
Consider the numbers. The 10 F1 teams have room for only 20 drivers, though that will increase to 22 next year when Cadillac join the ranks. Since Dutch super star Max Verstappen made his F1 debut at 17, won his first Grand Prix at 18, and his first of four drivers’ title at 23, the age profile has been lowering each year.
You need to have a small, built-in element of fear. That stops you from going out and doing crazy things
Last weekend at the Canadian Grand Prix, Kimi Antonelli from Italy made the podium at age 17, the third youngest driver in F1 history. Three seasons ago, in the Italian F4 Championship, Alex finished a close second to Antonelli. Such are the teenage margins.
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Only five Irish drivers have ever made the F1 paddock. British-born Ralph Firman raced one season with Jordan in 2003, and before him came Joe Kelly, Tommy Byrne and David Kennedy, with Derek Daly racing for five seasons until 1982. Down-born Eddie Irvine and Belfast-born John Watson raced under the British flag.
I don’t get paid anything ... It’s only when you get to F1 your life becomes pretty cool
All 14 F2 races are staged alongside a selection of the 24 F1 races, and when Alex followed up his Bahrain victory by winning the feature race in Imola in round four, he became the championship leader – a first for any Irish driver.
Then, on the streets of Monaco in round five, he started on the front alongside Victor Martins from France. The two collided on the first corner, causing an 11-car pile-up and the retirement of seven drivers, including Alex. Despite some hefty grid penalties going into round six in Barcelona, he bounced back with two brilliant drives, moving from 19th to second in the sprint race, then from eighth to fifth in the feature race, regaining the championship lead by just three points.
“As a driver coming through, people don’t seem to understand the way to learn is to try things,” he says, without revisiting some of the harsh social media comments that followed the Monaco incident. “Make mistakes, then make sure you don’t make those mistakes again. You’ll always get penalties, it shows you’re pushing the limits. But there’s always been a lot more good than bad.
“You need to have a small, built-in element of fear. That stops you from going out and doing crazy things. But it’s more using your head, understanding your limits. You build up in practice, then when it comes to qualifying you leave nothing on the table.
“Back in GB3, I flipped over the car in turn one at Oulton Park. Because we’re quite young, we brush it off pretty quickly. Within three laps I was already carrying more speed into the corner than when I crashed. To find the limit, you first have to go over it. Then also be comfortable to reach it again.”
If speed does most of the talking in motorsport, then money does the rest. Since Alex started in karting at age eight, the limited family resources have always been something of an obstacle, just never enough to slow him down.
“We still have very limited resources,” says Noel. “We’ve always had sponsors. Even in karting, at European level it could be up to €400,000 a year. We’d arrive at race weekends, get a couple of days testing, whereas some other guys could be there all week testing.
“But I could always see his style would suit cars more. Some people tried to change it, and I was like ‘no, wait till he gets to cars’. I knew he was very smooth, very precise, and because the car is naturally a lot heavier, he could work all that, and the tyres, and that’s proven itself already.
“In F2, it could cost anywhere between €2.5 million to €4 million, for one seat. Generally they’re the guys who would have a lot of money, just wouldn’t have the same talent. Even if Alex does win the F2 title this year, you can’t do it again the following year. Realistically if he finishes in the top five or six, he wouldn’t do it again, there’s a chance he might only do worse.
“And there’s no prize money. Your prize at the end of the year is if you’re any good, hopefully you get into F1. It’s only when you get to F1 you get paid, can make money. It’s like any junior sport. Until you get there, you’re walking on your own two feet.”
When Alex notices my reaction to this, he gently interrupts: “God no, I don’t get paid anything. We pay to race. It’s only when you get to F1 your life becomes pretty cool. Everything leading up to F1, everyone is paying to be there.”
Then Noel interrupts: “I still go to work every day!”
They’re often travelling at their own expense, and clearly aren’t yet soaking up any of the F1 glamour, even after their races are done.
“We might watch the first half of F1 qualifying, then leave, to avoid the traffic,” says Alex. “I’m not complaining, what I do is pretty cool, but it’s a long way from the F1 lifestyle.
“The whole way through my career, teams will always have a set price. If you’re a good driver, and because teams want to win, often a team will give that driver a discount, if they are struggling financially. And that has always been our situation, we’ve had a discounted drive, because the team wanted me to drive for them.
“It’s scouting, mostly. Like McLaren got in contact with my dad, said they might be interested. Then I did Macau, in 2023, my first race in F3, I got second. After that weekend they came to me. But if you’re daunted by that, there’s no point. The opportunity shouldn’t be scary, you should feel you’re being recognised.
“It can be a little bit intimidating being the only driver from Ireland racing at this level, but you get used to it. Coming up through the ranks, I’ve always been at the front, one to watch. Rather than an underdog.
“Most of the drivers on the F2 grid are quite nice. Just normal people. But we’re all competing for the same thing, we all want to be in F1. Motorsport is quite a selfish sport, and in the nicest way possible, the only person you care about is yourself.”
It’s why Netflix called their F1 series Drive to Survive, and why Alex, since he first sat behind the wheel of a racing car, where luck is a thin line between survival and disaster, has always been driven to succeed.
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The question of where it all started is patiently answered, despite it having been asked countless times before. And most likely it will be countless time again.
“One memory I’ve often told is a Formula Ford race my dad was doing, in Mondello, and he put me on his lap, in the car, took me around the track,” Alex says. “That was my first memory of getting the sense of speed.
“Then we went karting the first time, in Athboy, and after that I just was begging, ‘can we do it again, can we do it again ...’ Then it kind of snowballed from there.
“I tried rugby, soccer, it just didn’t do it for me. I wasn’t particularly good. As a kid, I was always quite skinny, very small. But in motorsport, I remember being a bit surprised from not going great, just a kid having fun, to all of a sudden being fast, and winning races.
“When you’re young and get that sense of what winning feels like, that’s when I realised it’s what I wanted to do.”
Despite his own racing pedigree, Noel was never the pushy parent: “No, it was very much if he wants to do it, we’ll do it. But we’ll do it right. When we went racing in England, he had to be 100 per cent committed. I always pushed him to get the best out of himself, and when you see potential like that in any sportsperson, you going to push for good results.”
In a spare bedroom, lined with just some of his son’s trophies, Noel also set up a simulation car during lockdown, which has been key in getting the best out of Alex’s innate driving intelligence.
“I remember my first race in karting was a disaster,” Alex says. “I spun every lap. My dad had to walk out on the track and drag me out of the grass, push me to get going again. Then my second race I won. But with motorsport, if it clicks, it clicks pretty fast.
“The last couple of years of my karting career were difficult, kind of up and down. We definitely had a few conversations, for different reasons. At times it was about money, if we’d be able to keep on funding it. Times when I wasn’t going as well as I wanted to, and it didn’t look like it would turn around.
“But we always had this thing, if you start something, you finish it. That’s motorsport, you can’t expect it to be perfect all the time. And realistically, once you start car racing, anything you did in karting is completely irrelevant.”
That soon became evident, as in his first car race in the Spanish F4 Championship in 2021, at the famed Spa-Francorchamps, he qualified in pole position.
“Which is kind of unheard of,” Alex says.
Physically, he’s still maturing too, but reckons at 72kg, kit included, he’s close to his ideal racing weight.
“Strong, fit and light is actually ideal,” he says. “Before testing in F1, I did a lot more neck training, but because the car has so much grip, it’s also easy to adapt. It just felt like it was stuck to the track, almost inspires confidence. It’s only when you get on the limit, that’s when a F1 car becomes so difficult to drive, because it’s so fast.
“But when I’m racing, and in a non-arrogant way, I’ve always tried to win in the most dominant way I can. If I’m leading the race by eight seconds, let’s try to win it by 10. Being consistent is good, but for me winning, that’s always been the attitude.”
The road travelled so far
Starting his racing career in the Irish Karting Championship in 2014, at age eight, Alex Dunne won his first Motorsport Ireland “IRL” plate in 2015.
After securing his first British Championship wins in 2017, he won his first European title in the 2019 Champions Cup Category.
In 2021, he made his racing car debut at the Spanish F4 Championship, securing pole for Pinnacle Motorsport. He also picked up a combined 16 race wins across the British, UAE and Italian Formula 4 Championships, racing for Hitech Grand Prix and US Racing.
In 2022 he was crowned British F4 champion, as well becoming Italian F4 Championship vice-champion. His 2023 campaign resulted in him being crowned vice-champion in the GB3 Championship, with five victories and eight podiums.
In 2024, he joined the McLaren Driver Development programme while competing in the F3 Championship with MP Motorsport, securing nine top-10 finishes throughout the season.
For the 2025 F2 season, he’s been racing for Rodin Motorsport, securing wins in Bahrain and Imola to top the championship standings heading into the halfway stage at the Austrian Grand Prix.
