McLaren boss Andrea Stella has praised Alex Dunne for his handling of a deluge of social media criticism after a first-lap incident in Monaco.

Dunne came in for a torrent of abuse and toxic commentary after he and Victor Martins collided at the first corner of last weekend’s Formula 2 Sprint race in Monte Carlo.

Alex Dunne: We’ve done more things right than done things wrong

The incident triggered a major first-lap pile-up which ended several drivers’ weekends, and Dunne was given a grid drop for the weekend in Spain as a consequence of the incident.

Initially, Dunne came in for the majority of the criticism from social media commentators, with this criticism tailing off in the aftermath of the weekend.

Such was the scale of the toxicity, however, that Dunne – who leads the Formula 2 championship once again after finishing second in the Sprint race in Spain – removed all his social media apps from his phone in a bid to keep his mind clear.

The 19-year-old Irishman spoke about the intensity of the abuse as he spoke to the media following his podium finish, saying, “I got a lot of stuff after Monaco, normally I’m not someone who reads things and gets annoyed by them.

“But, I think an hour after the race, I deleted social media off my phone because I’ve never received such bad messages in my life.

“A lot of the stuff I got was really, really bad and quite upsetting, to be honest.”

While Dunne looked to wish to say more, he became emotional and was clearly upset by how his week had played out, resulting in the press conference quickly moving on to put his fellow podium finishers in the spotlight instead.

Earlier in the session, Dunne was asked whether he felt he needed to make any changes to his approach to racing.
“I don’t think there’s any point in me commenting on Monaco really, what happened, happened,” he said.

“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.”

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Andrea Stella: McLaren had ‘good conversations’ with Alex Dunne

Dunne has been part of McLaren’s driver development programme for over a year, and has quickly climbed to the top of the Woking-based squad’s junior driver roster behind race drivers Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.

While Monaco was unquestionably a tough moment for Dunne, McLaren team boss Andrea Stella highlighted the response he’s seen from his junior prospect in taking on board the lessons that he could from the disappointment.

“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.

“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.

“I think we need to realise that we live in a difficult world in which people can attack other 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, a call to our sense of responsibility overall.

“Even you guys that have the pen [the media], 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.”

PlanetF1.com understands Dunne’s next logical step after his recent TPC outing with McLaren is to take part in some FP1 appearances as part of the team’s mandatory rookie running and, together with his impressive feat in leading the F2 championship as a rookie, Stella said considerations for his future will be made later in the year.

“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.”

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