McLaren hopeful breaks down in tears after explaining hate against him

Alex Dunne could not hide his emotions when addressing the recent backlash he received on social media for causing the first corner crash with Victor Martins that saw the Monaco F2 feature race red-flagged.

Speaking after storming to a brilliant second place in the F2 sprint race at the Spanish Grand Prix from 19th on the grid, the McLaren junior shared how upsetting the aftermath had been for him.

The Rodin driver, who went into the race with a 13-place grid penalty, gambled on stopping for fresh soft tyres under safety car conditions.

This allowed him to fight his way through the pack, along with race winner Richard Verschoor, to reclaim his lead in the F2 drivers' standings.

On 76 points, he is now three clear of Luke Browning and seven ahead of the aforementioned Dutchman.

Ten places of his grid penalty were applied by the stewards for the lap one collision in Monte Carlo, with a further three coming for running into the back of Martins at pit entry during practice in Spain - he will also start three positions lower than his fifth-place qualifying slot in Sunday's F2 feature race.

'Sometimes you just need to rein it back a little bit'

Initially asked about the crash in the principality, Dunne acknowledged the need to "rein it back" on occasion, but underlined the strength of support he is able to lean on.

"I don't think it's any point in me commenting on Monaco, really," Dunne told media including RacingNews365. "What happened, happened.

"But, yeah, I think moving forward, it's clear that in these scenarios, maybe sometimes you just need to rein it back a little bit.

"I think everyone knows Monaco Turn 1, if you come out in the lead, the chance of you finishing there is pretty high, but it was just one of those things.

"And I think moving forward, just to bring it back in a little bit is all that needs to be done - nothing massive needs to change.

"We've won two feature races at this point because we've done a lot of things right, and I think we've done more things right than we have done wrong. And so there are a couple of little things to work on, but that's natural, and I know what they are.

"Everyone around me is still pushing me on, and McLaren and the team, and everyone like that, is still fully behind me and still happy with how I'm doing. So yeah, a couple little things to change, but it should be fine."

'Really bad and quite upsetting'

However, when asked by RacingNews365 about the second accident with Martins and the criticism he was subjected to for the first, the Irishman was unable to conceal his feelings on the matter.

The 19-year-old revealed he had deleted social media applications from his phone in the wake of the crash, due to the "really bad" tone of the messages he was being sent.

"I got a lot of stuff after Monaco," said Dunne. "Normally, I'm not someone who reads things and gets annoyed about it, but I think an hour after the race, I just deleted all of social media from my phone because I think I've never received such bad messages in my life.

"I think a lot of the stuff I got was really, really bad and quite upsetting, to be honest," he added, fighting back his emotions. 

"But no, I think... sorry," he said, pausing, and wiping away tears from his eyes. At which point, the interviewer said they would come back to him later and moved on to the next question.