Post-qualifying penalty mars Dunne's F2 Montreal weekend

Credit: Formula 2

Rodin Motorsport's Alex Dunne was among four Formula 2 drivers who received penalties following Qualifying on Friday in Montréal.

Prior to the penalty, Dunne had topped Free Practice with his teammate Martinius Stenshorne and qualified third after a hard-fought session.

"It was a pretty good session," said Dunne, speaking to the media after qualifying on Friday evening. "Well, actually, no, I can say that it was a difficult session until the final run. The team and I tried a different downforce configuration at the beginning of quali in comparison to what we ran in Free Practice.

"It just wasn't working at the beginning. I felt like I got the most out of it, and at that point, halfway through the session I thought the best we could have got was P10, which is where I was before my final run. With the two Red Flags, I thought we were going to end up in a difficult position, but then we put the car back to what we knew was working from Free Practice, and up until I got impeded on my final lap, we would have been quite comfortable on pole without that. So I think the pace was good."

With the entire grid coming to the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve for the first time as the track was a brand new, late addition to the calendar, Free Practice was key to getting up to speed.

Speaking to DIVEBOMB about the importance of a good Free Practice, Dunne said: "I think pretty much all of what we learned from Free Practice was able to be taken forward, which I think is probably something that you don't normally have.

"Because the track was so dirty this morning, the deg was relatively low, so we were able to do quite a lot of useful push laps. And also in saying that, on weekends where we have soft and super soft, the difference between the two compounds isn't as big as you'd see in other weekends. You know, in some weekends we have soft and hard, and in that there's maybe two seconds of difference over one push lap. "So what you learn in Free Practice on weekends like that is a lot less than what we would have had today. So, no, I think we started at Free Practice in a really good place, and I think we were in a really good place in qualifying. So, you know, up until the point where I got held up in T10, I think when I looked at the data, I lost four tenths of my best lap, which is quite a substantial amount on a qualifying lap. So I think up until that point, we were still looking very good. And what we learned in Free Practice, we carried over well to qualifying."

The penalty

Dunne qualified third behind Laurens Van Hoepen and Rafael Câmara, but post-session penalties were still to come.

Both Câmara and Dunne were summoned to the stewards and later received a three-place grid penalty: Câmara for impeding Dunne and Dunne for impeding Rafael Villagomez. As a result, the pair drop to fifth and sixth for the Feature Race starting order, promoting Nikola Tsolov and Stenshorne to second and third.

Oliver Goethe and Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak were also penalised for causing red flags, and both lost their best lap times as a result.