![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/00239334-614.jpg\"\/)
\nThe 2025 Champions of Irish Motorsport Award winners<\/p>\n
Alex Dunne has been awarded the Manley Memorial Trophy for the Irish International Driver of the Year which was presented at the 2025 Motorsport Ireland Champions of Irish Motorsport Awards.<\/p>\n
The Offaly man, a former winner of the Sexton Trophy Young Racing Driver of the Year, has been competing in the FIA Formula 2 Series this year for Rodin Motorsport as well as outings in Formula 1 free-practice sessions at the Austrian and Italian Grand Prix with the McLaren F1 team.<\/p>\n
Dunne is reportedly in talks with the Alpine F1 team about a role in their driver development programme after he missed out on a deal with Red Bull.<\/p>\n
The 20-year-old is fifth in the Formula 2 standings with two victories and eight podiums in his rookie season, with one round remaining in Abu Dhabi this weekend<\/p>\n
Dunne is now also set for a second season with Rodin Motorsport in Formula 2.<\/p>\n
The Sexton Trophy for the 2025 Young Racing Driver of the Year was awarded to Fionn McLaughlin from Derry.<\/p>\n
\nThe 2025 Champions of Irish Motorsport Award winners<\/p>\n
Already a Red Bull Junior driver, McLaughlin completed his year with the British Formula 4 Championship title and looks to push even further with a Formula 3 drive on the horizon.<\/p>\n
As part of the award, McLaughlin will receive \u20ac42,500 in support funding from Motorsport Ireland and Sport Ireland. Runners-up Jason Smyth and Sean McGovern will also receive prize funding of \u20ac5,000 and \u20ac2,500 respectively.<\/p>\n
The Billy Coleman Award for the Young Rally Driver of the Year was won by 22-year-old Kyle McBride from Donegal.<\/p>\n
McBride won the award on the back of performances in the Irish and UK Stallantis Rally Cup and the Junior British Rally Championship this season in a Peugeot 208 Rally4.<\/p>\n
McBride is a member of the Motorsport Ireland Rally Academy and was a Billy Coleman Award finalist in 2022 and 2024<\/p>\n
The Neil Shanahan Memorial Trophy was awarded to the 11-year-old Danny Dempsey, from Dunboyne, Co. Meath, who was crowned National Cadet Karting Champion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Dunne has been awarded the Manley Memorial Trophy for the Irish International Driver of the Year which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173263,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-173262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}