McLaren urged to ‘loan out’ promising young teen for 2026 F1 seat

Sky Sports F1 pundit Karun Chandhok believes McLaren should “loan out” its promising junior driver Alex Dunne to secure him a place on the 2026 Formula 1 grid.

Chandhok made the suggestion after Dunne delivered an eye-catching performance on his FP1 debut at the Austrian Grand Prix, driving Lando Norris’s MCL39 at the start of the weekend.

The 19-year-old set a best time of 1m05.766s around the Red Bull Ring, finishing less than a tenth of a second shy of teammate Oscar Piastri in the other McLaren.

Dunne currently leads the Formula 2 standings in his rookie season, having claimed feature race victories in Bahrain and Imola and added a sprint race podium in Barcelona.

"If I was McLaren now, I'd be trying to do a deal with Cadillac or someone like that to farm him out," said Chandhok.

"Based on everything he's shown – he's leading the F2 championship, they've seen potential in testing, and we’re now seeing it publicly.

"You want to find him a seat somewhere to build up some racing experience. I'd be trying to get him a deal somewhere else for a period of time.
"Farm him out, have him on some sort of tether that they can pull him back in, in the way Mercedes did with George Russell in the past."

Dunne joined McLaren’s young driver development programme just over 12 months ago and completed two private tests with the British F1 team in recent months - at Zandvoort and Austin - prior to his FP1 run in Austria.

Reflecting on the session, the Irishman said: “It was not a bad lap. It wasn’t on new soft tyres either, so there are a lot of positives to take.

“Of course, if I got in the car again I would get quicker and quicker. I put the lap together pretty well and applied what I’d learned in the session.

“The team helped me massively to prepare for this, so that made it a lot easier.

“Regardless of the performance and pace at the end, I’m just more pleased it was a clean session. There were no mishaps, I didn’t get in anyone’s way.

“All the stuff we needed to test at the beginning went smoothly and to plan. From that side, I was very happy.”