I didn't back off and honestly I have to say we destroyed them
Written by Peter Clifford | Layout: Oliver Schran
3 min readPublished on
Crossing the line first in both the Sprint and Feature F2 races in Melbourne, Isack Hadjar had pace no one could come close to. The Sprint victory was taken away by a 10-second penalty for an incident at the start but he held on to his Feature win.
Fellow Red Bull Junior Pepe Martí was taken out by that multi-car Sprint Race start drama and had an unlucky Feature Race.
Isack Hadjar knows he won twice
"We were really confident heading into Qualifying,” enthused the 19-year-old Frenchman. “In Free Practice, we were P2, just a thousandth off. I had a great car and in the first run, I showed our pace. P3, just 9 hundredths off. But the second run was like Zandvoort last year, from the wrong end of the pit lane there were always cars in the way. So P8 was a real disappointment when I knew I had a car for the front row.”
The Sprint Race was weird in the end, I thought it was a race incident.
“I did my best to push as much as I could, I took the lead at Turn 1, I pushed, I didn't back off and honestly I have to say we destroyed them. The pace was insane, it felt great to win on track and so disappointing to have it taken away.”
“Today, the Feature Race was just the cherry on the cake. It feels so good to finally have a bit of luck. It's part of motorsport but I feel like the last year-and-a-half was really tough for me. To finally be rewarded is great.”
“I didn't have the best first run on the option. I was behind Pepe (Martí) and he had the priority on the pitstop. I was going next but then there was a Virtual Safety Car and I found myself in front on my strategy. From there I knew I had the race won and I just had to keep it on track.”
“Started off quite well with 7th in Qualifying," explained the 18-year-old Spaniard. "A good place for the races. In the Sprint Race, I got an amazing launch, a really good reaction time and that put us in a strange spot in the first 100 metres of the race and I was hit by another driver which ended my race. The car was really good and we missed the chance to win the race.”
Pepe Martí looking forward to race at Albert Park 2024 - Formula 2
“Today another really good start, 7th to 5th then I made a small mistake in T10 and that cost me 2 places. After that we were very unlucky with the Safety Car, we pitted just before. We came 9th on track and 14th after penalties so a big shame, we missed out on good points for reasons outside our control. Already looking forward to Imola which I think will be very good for us.”
