Photo: Red Bull Content Pool
Isack Hadjar could not hide his disappointment with the impact unreliability had on his results in last weekend’s Formula 2 round at the Red Bull Ring.
The Campos Racing driver topped practice, then in qualifying his engine failed at the end of his first run. At that point he had been fastest, but being unable to do a second run meant he was shuffled down to seventh place.
A new engine was fitted, but he could not run it at full power for the sprint race and finished 13th after starting fourth on the reversed grid. That problem was rectified for the feature race, where he rose to third place.
“It feels great,” he said after making the podium. “Yesterday was, I mean the whole weekend was just a disaster with the pace we had. From free practice to qualifying, we were just quickest. It felt easy, you know. I really think I had the pole in the bag, and then… it happened.
“Then yesterday we had limited power as well for another reason. So confidence was low, but I really, really went for it today. And to have a P3 from seventh is a good result.”
Marti came to Austria nine points off the championship lead, and left it trailing Hitech GP’s Paul Aron by 11 points.
“It was a waste of points this weekend with the pace we had. Obviously pole was not guaranteed, you never know what would have happened, but we are the quickest at this point. So I think we missed out on two points, already, and then yesterday was doing 28 laps with limited power. It was a long one.
“Today we made up for it as we could, but it should have been much more points this weekend, I believe. We would have fought for the win, that’s for sure.”
Formula Scout asked Hadjar why he had to run with less power in the sprint race, and he replied: “It’s nothing wrong with the new engine. It was another problem. It’s just how unlucky we have been so far.”
The Red Bull junior is convinced he will win the title once he is free of reliability problems, as “every race we finish I feel quite happy with” and “every time we put the car on track it’s always super fast straight from lap one in free practice”.
“I really have no doubt we can win the championship if we keep doing that,” he said.
“If I manage to finish all my races without everything that was out of my control, I would be quite a bit ahead. I’m pretty confident about that. I think my pace since the beginning of the season, we’ve always been quick, and we had so many technical issues, have been taken out as well. In the end, I feel like being second [in the standings] with all that happened to me, is pretty pretty decent. So really looking forward to less DNFs and more when I finish.”