Alex Dunne’s three-place grid penalty after qualifying in Montréal reshaped the f2 drivers starting order for the Feature Race. He had qualified third, but a stewards call for impeding Rafael Villagomez pushed him back to sixth and lifted Nikola Tsolov and Martinius Stenshorne into the top three.
Dunne and Câmara Penalized
Four Formula 2 drivers were penalised after Friday qualifying in Montréal, but Dunne’s case had the clearest effect at the front of the grid. The Rodin Motorsport driver was summoned to the stewards with Rafael Câmara, and each received a three-place grid penalty after the session.
Dunne had gone into qualifying after leading Free Practice with teammate Martinius Stenshorne, then placed third behind Laurens Van Hoepen and Câmara. He said the team tried a different downforce configuration at the start of qualifying, then returned the car to what had worked in Free Practice before his final run.
By then, the plan had already been complicated by the traffic and stoppages around him. Dunne said he was impeded on his final lap, and later added that up until that point he thought the team could have been in position for pole.
Villagomez Holds the Thread
The specific breach that dropped Dunne came from impeding Rafael Villagomez, while Câmara was penalised for impeding Dunne. That left both drivers down the order for the Feature Race, with Dunne and Câmara sliding to fifth and sixth after the penalties were applied.
The change also moved Nikola Tsolov and Stenshorne up to second and third, turning the front row picture on its head from the provisional qualifying result. For a grid built from a session that had already been shaped by two Red Flags, the final order now reflects who kept a clean lap and who did not.
Oliver Goethe and Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak were also penalised on Friday for causing red flags, and both lost their best lap times. That added another layer to a qualifying day in Montréal where track position mattered from the start, and where one blocked lap could change more than one driver’s weekend.
For Dunne, the immediate task is simple: recover from sixth instead of third and make the altered starting order work in his favour. The pace was there in Free Practice, but the penalty means he has to turn that speed into a stronger race result from a worse launch point.
