Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd
The top three in F2’s title fight were also the contenders for victory in last weekend’s Spa-Francorchamps feature race. They enjoyed the opportunity to go up against each other, but there could only be one winner
“I feel like I drove the perfect race. I didn’t have an amazing start, but still on lap one I showed [my plan], to make the move on Gabriel [Bortoleto]”.
A very happy Isack Hadjar says after his fourth feature race win of the Formula 2 season.
“After every safety car restart I felt [I had] a lot of pace, and that’s how we managed to overtake Paul [Aron], before the pitstop. But he managed the undercut really well, we had a bit of a slow stop. So he overtook us back.”
But Hadjar on his new tyres got back past, and in the early laps of his second stint the Campos Racing driver created enough of a gap that he soon did not need to continue focusing on his Hitech GP rival behind. But when Virtuosi Racing’s Gabriel Bortoleto overtook Aron too, it was clear there was another contender in the victory – and title – fight.
“It’s only in the last three laps, or after that, where I [thought I] was probably going to win. Before that there was lot of doubts,” Hadjar admitted to media including Formula Scout post-race.
“Gabriel was catching, we had the cars that hadn’t pitted yet, I lost some time behind them. Once I cleared them, I kind of got a good pace again. But we were still pushing at the end. And I got the tyres back again in the last few laps, and it helped me.”
After Bortoleto had brought Hadjar’s gap down to 1.3 seconds, in the last three laps he pulled away again to win by 2.934s.
Bortoleto had lost second place to Hadjar on the opening lap, which he in part put down a throttle failure on the way from the support paddock which meant his tyres were not adequately warmed up by the time the race began.
“The team and F2 did a great job by changing the piece that was broken there. I managed to warm the tyres as fast as we could, in a situation where I had no brake temperatures, anything,” he explained.
“So for me to start with the softs, I had very poor temperature. So I think Aron and, Isack, they had a pace advantage for quite a bit of time just because I didn’t have the temps on the tyres yet. And then after that, when we pitted for medium, I think at the beginning, it didn’t look like so strong. But then the balance came towards me. And Isack and Paul were fighting a bit, so it was good. Because then I could catch up and I was quite fast at that moment of the race. So quite happy with my performance today, with everything that happened before the race.”
He added: “To be honest, I thought I was going to win at some point because it was quite clear that I was much faster, for like two laps. That I catch them like a second per lap when I was flying. But then it was a little bit of deja vu for me from Imola. Catching Isack, and then when I catch him, the guy ***ing puts the pace on and.”
That denied Bortoleto the advantage of using DRS against Hadjar for any longer than the two laps he was within a second of him, and he called it “a shame that I couldn’t overtake him earlier with the traffic, when we catch”.
Aron meanwhile had exited the picture entirely through a lack of pace, and was being hunted down by DAMS’ Jak Crawford. He was another driver who had made an early stop to switch from soft to medium compound tyres, and found himself unable to match Hadjar’s pace on fresh rubber. By the time he began to outpace him, he was already seven seconds behind.
Bortoleto and Crawford’s comments pointed towards Hadjar getting his tyres up to temperature on the repaved Spa-Francorchamps circuit faster than his opposition. And based on Hadjar’s own comments about his tyres coming back to him late on, it sounded like he had engaged in some mid-stint thermal management at a point where his rivals perhaps were not due to reaching the optimum operating temperatures later than he had.
Feature race pace
| Lap | ARO | HAD | BOR | HAD gap to ARO | HAD gap to BOR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 | 2m00.647s | 2m00.521s | 2m01.031s | +0.494s | -1.052s |
| 8 | Pitstop | 1m59.647s | 2m00.652s | -2.057s | |
| 9 | 2m27.099s | Pitstop | 2m01.010s | ||
| 10 | 2m00.037s | 2m26.530s | Pitstop | -0.596s | |
| 11 | 1m59.029s | 2m00.369s | 2m27.254s | +0.774s | -4.439s |
| 12 | 2m00.116s | 1m59.859s | 1m59.770s | +0.487s | -4.350s |
| 13 | 2m01.298s | 1m59.746s | 1m59.404s | -1.065s | -4.008s |
| 14 | 2m00.424s | 2m00.250s | 1m59.567s | -1.239s | -3.325s |
| 15 | 2m01.008s | 2m00.713s | 2m00.310s | -1.534s | -2.922s |
| 16 | 2m01.577s | 2m01.748s | 2m00.838s | -1.363s | -2.012s |
| 17 | 2m03.897s | 2m03.121s | 2m02.096s | -2.139s | -0.987s |
| 18 | 2m03.769s | 2m01.711s | 2m01.619s | -4.197s | -0.895s |
| 19 | 2m03.472s | 2m01.855s | 2m02.297s | -5.814s | -1.337s |
| 20 | 2m03.362s | 2m02.120s | 2m02.420s | -7.056s | -1.637s |
| 21 | 2m02.768s | 2m02.736s | 2m02.514s | -7.088s | -1.415s |
| 22 | 2m02.785s | 2m02.132s | 2m02.067s | -7.741s | -1.350s |
| 23 | 2m02.411s | 2m01.867s | 2m02.186s | -8.285s | -1.669s |
| 24 | 2m02.970s | 2m02.020s | 2m02.391s | -9.235s | -2.040s |
| 25 | no time | 2m02.019s | 2m02.913s | N/A | -2.934s |
Formula Scout put this to Hadjar, and also asked about Campos’s set-up direction.
“Yeah, we seemed to have really good pace out of the pits in cold conditions. We managed to be aggressive on the warm-up and have some pace straight away. I felt that advantage,” he replied.
“Gabriel had another situation. So benefitting me a lot [he had others to pass]. But compared to Paul, I went out of the pits when he had one lap more, he didn’t seem to catch me that much. So yeah, we definitely are fast out of the box.”
Aron had pipped Hadjar to pole by 0.168s despite being 18th fastest through the speed trap in qualifying.
Bortoleto and Hadjar were third and 14th on speed at that point in the lap, but at the end of the second and third sectors (where good traction and therefore acceleration out of corners makes the difference rather than end-of-straight speed) Hadjar set the second highest top speed.
Come the race, it was Hadjar who was slowest of the trio through the speed trap and at the end of the Kemmel Straight (16th and 17th) since he spent much of the race leading and without access to a tow, but again the fastest of the three at the end of the lap and the fastest of anyone on maximum speed reached through the high-downforce sweeps of sector two. Aron was second to him there, 16th fastest at the end of the Kemmel Straight and joint slowest with Crawford at the finish line.
“Yesterday we had more wet driving, and we had no idea how the balance evolution would go,” added Hadjar, reluctant to “go into details” on the technical side much like Aron two days before but explaining his pace fluctuations.
“I had a little moment, it was [around] mid race when I caught the old prime runners. I did the right thing instead of trying to overtake them, I was basically waiting for them to pit and stay in their DRS, and I was waiting for Gabriel.
Photo: Red Bull Content Pool
“Once I cleared them, I just picked up the pace again. I think that’s what I did really well. And I felt really strong in slow-speed in general, so first sector, turn one, the last chicane, and [turns] eight and nine. The higher speed stuff was a bit less good. But the slow-speed was really good.”
The next two rounds are at Monza and in Baku, where straightline speed is super important due to long straights which end with heavy braking zones. Should drivers such as Hadjar head into the summer break confident their Spa pace is a sign of things to come?