French driver Isack Hadjar was a top talent in Formula 3, but when he joined the Formula 2 grid last year, his success didn’t continue, and he surprisingly finished in the bottom half of the standings. In an interview with Feeder Series, the Red Bull Junior Team prodigy talks about what went wrong and why he’s confident about a turnaround this year.

By Steven Walton

Hadjar was a star in F3 right from the off. He won his first-ever race in Bahrain, pulled off one of the overtakes of the year at Imola’s second Rivazza and won Silverstone’s sprint race by boldly swooping past Victor Martins at Stowe on the penultimate lap. He fought for the championship until the final round in Monza, and had that weekend gone a bit more his way, Hadjar could have walked away an F3 champion.

After a year like that, it was no surprise that was promoted to F2 for 2023. What was surprising was how Hadjar fared when he arrived in the series.

Driving for Hitech GP in 2023 – the same team he succeeded with in F3 – Hadjar finished 14th in the F2 standings, the lowest-placed of the six Red Bull–supported drivers on the grid. He scored two fewer points than teammate Jak Crawford, whom he’d beaten the year before in F3. He finished the year with 55 points, not even a third of the 203 scored by eventual champion Théo Pourchaire.

“It was just a bit of a mess and F2 is not an easy championship when you’re a rookie … it was just really really frustrating,” Hadjar told Feeder Series in an interview conducted before pre-season testing. “It was, let’s say, my worst season I would say in terms of results, even though I felt [I was] driving really well in some weekends, even sometimes at my best.”

His 14th place in F2 now stands as an unusual blemish on a strong junior record that includes top-five championship finishes in French F4, FRECA, Formula Regional Asia and F3. “To be honest, I hate talking about my F2 season last year,” he said.

What went wrong?

Hadjar’s year in F2 was spoiled by setup issues, an inconsistent car and a few bouts of bad luck.

“I have a way of driving the car that I like, and I like setting up the car for my driving, I just couldn’t have that, the team couldn’t provide it for me,” Hadjar said. He described his style of entering a corner as aggressive, explaining that he liked to throw the car in and just manage it. “I just felt like I didn’t have the rear end to do that and I just felt really in danger any time I was trying to push, and the car was quite unpredictable,” he said.

Hadjar only picked up two podiums in 2023, though neither came under normal circumstances. In the Austria sprint race, he finished fourth on the road but was promoted to third when third-place finisher Clément Novalak was disqualified. In Zandvoort, he started the sprint race from the reverse-grid pole, but the race only lasted two laps because of a major crash and subsequent wet weather. Hadjar was thus declared the winner, though no points were awarded given the number of laps completed.

Hadjar conceded there were times when his Hitech car was a “rocketship” and that he failed to capitalise or simply got unlucky. “I’m thinking of Melbourne, Baku, Zandvoort, where the car was fine, to be honest, and that’s the weekend where I didn’t maximise, also I was not the luckiest,” he said. “I think a lot of regrets thinking about those races now.”

In Melbourne, Hadjar qualified fourth and was in contention for a podium in the feature race until Roy Nissany hit him on lap 14, dropping him out of the points. In Baku, Hadjar was second-quickest in free practice, but hit the wall in qualifying, leaving him 18th on the grid. In Monaco, Hadjar led the sprint race until a mechanical issue forced him to retire. In Monza, he qualified fourth for the feature race but was sandwiched at the first corner by Victor Martins and Roman Staněk and lost his front wing, ruining his race.

Hadjar said he felt his Hitech car was quicker in the first half of the season, but he was not good enough for it. 

“And [the] second half was quite the opposite, where I felt like [I was] maximising more and not getting the results.” You can see this happening in Hadjar’s qualifying results. During the first seven races of the year, he only qualified inside the top 10 twice. In the final six rounds of the year, he qualified inside the top 10 for all but one.

Red Bull ‘kept believing in me’

Since the start of 2022, Hadjar has been a member of the Red Bull Junior Team. Late last year he was given F1 practice session outings, one with AlphaTauri in Mexico and another with Red Bull in Abu Dhabi.

Hadjar was one of the six drivers in last year’s F2 field who were affiliated with Red Bull and driving a car painted with a striking Red Bull livery. The others were Ayumu Iwasa, Enzo Fittipaldi, Dennis Hauger, Jak Crawford and Zane Maloney. For 2024, Hadjar has been retained in the Red Bull Junior Team lineup, while Hauger, Crawford and Maloney have all parted ways with the programme. Fittipaldi is understood to be a Red Bull athlete but not a full junior.

These changes mean Hadjar now spearheads the academy’s presence in F2.

Hadjar said he was “really, really grateful” for Red Bull’s continued support. “Honestly, I remember being in the car in a lot of races, thinking that’s over for me, that’s it, they kept believing in me and they’re giving me another chance to fight,” he said.

Hadjar felt being part of the Red Bull Junior Team didn’t bring any added pressure, saying, “They’re giving me a chance of doing what I like to do, and I’m just grateful for that. Otherwise, I’d be watching TV at this point, so [I] don’t feel any pressure.

“It’s obvious that if I don’t get to perform this year, it’s over for me, it’s normal, and you have to accept that … it’s part of it, but I’m putting more pressure on myself than they do, so I’m all good.”

2024 is ‘the most important year of my career’

For his second season in F2, Hadjar has switched teams, trading Hitech for Campos. The stakes are high. “It’s the most important year of my career, I have to say,” he said. “It’s literally my last chance … a lot of pressure, but you’ve got to accept that and work and get the work done.” 

Whether the move to Campos pays off remains to be seen. On the surface, it may seem puzzling given the team has often finished in the bottom half of the F2 standings, placing ninth last year, 11th in 2022 and seventh in 2021. Still, in 2019, then–Renault F1 test driver Jack Aitken switched to Campos for his second season in F2 and was able to deliver seven podiums and three wins on his way to fifth in the championship.

Just last season, Campos won for the first time in three years, and Kush Maini qualified the Campos car inside the top 10 in more than half of last year’s rounds. 

This season, F2 has a new car for the first time in six years, and Campos displayed promising signs during the sole pre-season test in Bahrain. It was the first proper taste that teams got of the new Dallara F2 2024 chassis. During the test, Hadjar finished inside the top 10 during all four sessions held in dry weather, even topping the session on the morning of the third day.

This year, Campos will also become the sole F2 team with links to the Red Bull Junior Team – a change from last year when Red Bull juniors drove for a handful of F2 outfits, including Hitech, DAMS and MP Motorsport.

Campos team principal Adrián Campos Jr told Feeder Series at a virtual media roundtable in Bahrain that Red Bull would help Campos where it could this season, but he added, “At the end, it’s Campos. We are [these] 12 people. We have been always.”

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency / Red Bull Content Pool