Dunne and Stenshorne laud Rodin Motorsport’s fantastic job in mega Baku qualifying
“I think this is probably the first time I've properly smiled all year”
It’s no surprise why Alex Dunne’s relief was writ large in equal measure to jubilation. The Irishman has been a regular fixture in qualifying’s top three, but never at the top of the timesheets.
Yet, even as he sat on the famous red sofa to address the media, the emotions hadn’t yet sunk in for Dunne. It was a momentous occasion, Dunne’s first pole position all season, with his last coming at Spa back in 2025.
The Irishman has experienced plenty of transformation in his sophomore campaign, often choosing to bide his aggression and bank valuable points and big results when in his favour. Dunne has also publicly highlighted Rodin Motorsport’s difficulties with race pace and getting the tyres to maintain optimum grip over a race distance.
Yet, despite lingering concerns over the race pace, F2’s ‘super-sized’ Baku weekend provides the best possible opportunity to showcase his speed and the best evidence of Rodin’s improvements in the recent rounds.
“It's going to be in the back of our minds,” Dunne expressed, speaking to DIVEBOMB on the team’s struggles over a race distance. “But I do feel we have improved in that area.”
What gives Dunne more confidence are the recent outings in Monza and Madrid. The Irishman may have encountered trouble late in the race in Monza, but remained in strong contention for a podium finish for most of the race.
F2’s Madrid weekend was a major anomaly, with almost no opportunity for drivers to overtake, but Dunne showed flashes of pace to hold down second on the road. Scoring the fastest lap was only further evidence of underlying speed in the machinery, and a major crowning moment to Dunne’s season.
“In terms of race pace, Madrid was a massive confidence boost,” Dunne said, speaking on F2’s previous round. “It was kind of the first weekend where it all kind of came together again.”
Dunne has good reason to believe this rising turn of form could continue this weekend. Coming into Baku with the best Madrid weekend of F2’s top four in 2026, the gap stood at 38 points to championship leader Nikola Tsolov.
This was the closest gap between the top four in the standings since the Austrian round at the Red Bull Ring, when Dunne sat only 28 points off the lead in the standings.
“After that weekend (Madrid), I said, ‘I'll make sure I leave nothing out there for the rest of the season’ and try and close the gap as much as possible,” Dunne expressed in a statement of intent ahead of F2’s trio of races in Baku.
“We've started in a good way, but we can just do what we can do,” he continued, speaking on the positive start to Baku’s weekend.
Baku laid down the best chance for Dunne to flex his qualifying prowess over the course of the season. The Rodin driver has now scored a top-four finish in 12 out of 13 qualifying sessions so far, including his pair of stellar Baku results. This translates into an average F2 qualifying result of 3.69, second only to Invicta’s Rafael Câmara’s figure of 2.46 up until now.
But even behind the pair of front-row lockouts, the challenge of Baku was no easy mastery for either Dunne or Stenshorne. Drivers had to get their positioning on track right, and not too close to the driver ahead to lose out in the twisty second sector, but not too distant in order to lose out on the effects of slipstream down the long run from Turn 16 to the start/finish line.
Such was the time gain due to the slipstream all the way up to the line that it had the potential to cause a major shift in the order, even from one timed lap to another. The perfect example of this was DAMS’ Dino Beganovic. The Swedish driver, who sat 83 milliseconds off Dunne’s time after two sectors, finished only eighth in the classification, nearly half a second off the Irishman’s pole lap.
It’s what led Dunne to express the difficulty in getting the slipstream and executing to perfection. “It was quite difficult to manage. The slipstream is even more important than at Monza, and that’s the one everyone talks about for traffic management,” he reiterated.
Naturally, with this effect so powerful and game-changing, it saw drivers jostling for position on their out laps, and in between flying laps. Several drivers huddled for position between Turns 6 and 7, in the tight stretch before the infamous Castle section.
Several drivers were also picked up for driving unnecessarily slowly over the course of both qualifying sessions, including both Dunne and Stenshorne, highlighting the challenges the F2 contingent faced.
But on this day, the stars lined up for Rodin Motorsport. Dunne found himself behind fellow Alpine junior Kush Maini. The Indian driver had showcased a stronger turn of pace over the session, and he even briefly went quickest before Dunne eclipsed his time.
“I think, at least on my side, I was always behind someone, but I never really had the perfect slipstream.”
Meanwhile, Stenshorne set his benchmark the following lap, closely tailing Gabriele Minì as he eventually closed to within 33 milliseconds of his teammate ahead. But as the entire grid was to find out, these ended up being the best laps of the session.
Even as the Norwegian driver put himself behind the Trident of John Bennett, he did not improve any further, still staying in second. But while Dunne locked up and had to abort his final flying lap attempt, he found himself in the clear.
The Rodin duo still counted themselves more fortunate, compared to some of their fellow contenders taking emergency rearguard action. Championship leader Tsolov found himself too close to AIX’s Cian Shields, forced to back off at Turn 15. Invicta’s Rafa Câmara made his way only up to fifth, but only after taking a healthy slipstream from teammate Joshua Dürksen
This compromised situation meant the Paraguayan driver started down in 16th, well behind his teammate, highlighting just how critical the positioning for teams and drivers turned out to be over the course of the weekend.
As the times ticked down, Rodin Motorsport’s celebrations grew, with Dunne securing his best result of the season in pole, but the job was only half done. Only the first 20 minutes of qualifying had elapsed, with another session just coming up in 10 minutes.
The slipstream proved ever unpredictable, and as Dunne mentioned, he had not been able to benefit from it as much as he anticipated. Both he and Stenshorne found themselves chasing the benchmark time set by Rafa Câmara, over a quarter of a second down.
It was at this juncture that Rodin took a different direction from the strategies of fellow competitors Campos and Invicta. While the latter two did not return to the track for the final three minutes of qualifying, Dunne and Stenshorne’s Rodins returned to take another shot at pole position.
Both drivers eventually got around to starting their final flying laps, with evidence that the lap time was still achievable. ART’s Kush Maini and PREMA Racing’s Mari Boya had already jumped up into the top three, a yardstick of what was achievable out on track.
As anticipated, both drivers immediately set the timesheets alight, putting in their personal best sectors of the session. Dunne delivered a lap good enough to take him past Câmara’s benchmark, albeit by 54 milliseconds. But all eyes quickly turned to Stenshorne, who delivered a crushing blow in the middle sector.
Running close behind the Trident of Laurens van Hoepen, the Norwegian driver’s high-risk strategy of being close to the driver ahead paid off. A middle sector time of 45.876 seconds was undoubtedly quicker than anyone else by a significant margin.
This set him up superbly for the final sector of the race, as he ran in an ideal position to benefit from van Hoepen ahead. Stenshorne eventually stopped the clock at 1:53.728 in the second qualifying session, comfortably clearing the rest of the grid by four tenths of a second.
It’s unusual to see a driver find himself this quick in F2’s qualifying sessions, but Stenshorne left the session delighted to have made the most of his lap time. “I think we really maximised our session and we improvised well with the strategy,” he said, delighted with his showing.
Stenshorne may have been more soft-spoken, but came into the Baku weekend looking to fight at the front of the field. He had good memories of the Baku streets from 2025, having qualified a strong seventh on his F2 debut for Trident.
He has slid to the fringes of the top 10 in the standings after starting the season on an excellent note, but Baku presents an unmissable opportunity for the Norwegian driver to revive his season. Pole-sitters have won the last three Feature Races held in Baku, and this gives both Rodin drivers hope of securing a historic double across the weekend.
While the likes of Campos and Invicta opted to save a set of tyres and play the long game, Rodin went with the playbook around Baku, putting themselves in prime position for both races. Whether their decision is vindicated or not, it remains to be seen. As Stenshorne expressed, “It's difficult to predict too much in motorsport.”
If anything has to be concluded from motorsport’s past in Baku, expect the unthinkable, and its never a straightforward race at the venue. Both Rodin drivers will face the biggest test of their season once the lights go out for all three races on Friday and Saturday.
Comments