Photo: Red Bull Content Pool
Campos Racing has encountered multiple technical issues with the new Dallara F2 2024 car, and hopes the most extreme of those is now “definitvely resolved”.
After the second round of the Formula 2 season in Jeddah, Campos put out a statement calling the events of the weekend “tremendously cruel to the interests of” the team and its drivers.
Isack Hadjar retired from both races after his car’s engine went into safe mode, and he already had problems in practice which limited him to six laps. His team-mate Pepe Marti had issues with the activation of DRS in the sprint race that limited him to seventh place.
“After the work and analysis we have carried out since Jeddah, we hope that the issue that affected Isack is definitively resolved,” said team principal Adrian Campos Jr. “Now is the time to focus and be able to translate all that potential into results.”
Formula Scout asked Marti about the technical issues, and if any reliability doubts lingered.
“To have three problems engine-wise in a weekend and one DRS problem in the weekend is to me exceptional. I mean, it would make no sense.
“I’m not putting the blame on anyone else, but obviously it’s a new car. So there are going to be things that are going to have to be restructured or replaced or whatever. I mean, how often do we get Formula 1 teams that go out on track and they’re like ‘oh, we have an overheating issue of 95° over the target temperatures’.
“So that’s going to happen every so often. And my team are trying their best to work around it and trying to understand what the source of the problem is. You try to inform [engine supplier] Mechachrome, you try to inform Dallara as quick as possible, so they can also work on it if it’s their part of the problem. And if it’s our part of the problem, then my mechanics and my engineers, they’ve been working non-stop since Jeddah.
“So for that, we have to trust them a lot, and then we go out on track and we expect the brakes to brakes, throttle to work, throttle to not get stuck. And it’s just like that. You drive out and you want to have that confidence that everything is working fine. And normally that’s the case, and sometimes it won’t be. So from my side, I’m not concerned. I know my team well, I know they’re great mechanics and great engineers.”
Campos had no further issues to report during round three in Melbourne, where Hadjar won both races on-the-road but lost one victory to a penalty for making contact with Marti.