Alex Dunne remained fourth in this year’s Formula 2 World Championship after narrowly missing out on a podium in yesterday’s feature race at Silverstone. The home of motorsport played host to the British Grand Prix weekend, where Dunne performed well at last year, and his weekend started well; he topped the sole practice session of the weekend before qualifying in second place on Friday afternoon. That was followed by a ninth placed finish in the sprint race, which was won by Bulgarian Nikola Tsolov, who took the lead of the driver’s championship from Gabriele Mini.
Dunne, as mentioned, started second for the feature race on Sunday morning, and was set to grab a third placed finish around the Northamptonshire track, but was passed with three laps to go by Mexican Rafael Villagomez, meaning that the Offaly native ended up in fourth at the end of the race, capping off a weekend that keeps him in fourth in the championship table, but further adrift of Tsolov, who also won the feature race, taking him to six wins for the season, one behind the all-time record set by Charles Leclerc in 2017, who as it so happened, won a dramatic British Grand Prix in Formula 1 yesterday, leading home 2018 F2 champion George Russell and nine time Silverstone winner Lewis Hamilton. Tsolov’s lead at the top of the table is 17 points, and he leads Dunne by 49 points at the halfway stage of the season, as the championship heads into the Ardennes Forest in two weeks for the Belgian Grand Prix, where Dunne struggled last year. If he wants to gain ground, he’ll have to build on a first half of a season that heralded no wins, but brought about a lot of experience and promise for the young Irish driver.
