Hadjar focused on ‘winning again’ rather than title fight in Qatar after ‘unreal’ 2024 performance

Isack Hadjar has described his performances this season as “unreal” as the Campos Racing driver targets a return to winning ways this week in Lusail in a bid to aid his title challenge.

The Frenchman returns to the track this weekend for the penultimate round of the year, and he currently sits second in the Standings on 165 points – 4.5 points behind leader Gabriel Bortoleto.

Looking ahead to the Lusail action, Hadjar who, fresh from spending some time on the road in The Americas with the RB Formula 1 Team as Reserve Driver, believes he is more mature this time compared to the last time he fought for a title in Formula 3.

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“The last time I was in a title fight I was younger and had much less experience and ended up with a mistake on my side,” he said.

“But to be fair I have not done many mistakes this year and every time the car has been able to deliver, I was always pretty much on top of what I could do, and we were successful.

“The last two rounds didn't work out for things out of my control, but I am not really worried about it, I think that we can bounce back and beat those guys.

“To be fair when you spend two weeks out of the points, you're not even thinking about the Championship, you are thinking about getting back on top and winning again.

“So that's really all I want, just to put it on pole and to win on Sunday. All my focus is going there, I'm not really counting the points, it's more about winning.”

Speaking more about his form this season, when told his four Feature Race wins were one less than Charles Leclerc’s record of five, Hadjar says it shows how good he and Campos have been this year.

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“It could have been even more,” said Hadjar when asked about his four wins. “I think about my whole season, four Feature Race wins, I think it's the best of what I could have done with all the issues we have had.

“It's obviously a lot, four in such a competitive field. Obviously, we've got all our points on Sunday, on Saturday it's been much poorer on my side. It just shows that performance has been quite unreal.

“I have only been outside of the top 10 in quali twice, just flying really the whole year, and the team has done a great job. So, performance-wise, there are two more Feature Races to be won, and that could be record breaking so that's the target to be honest.”

Hadjar’s last Feature Race victory came at Spa-Francorchamps, when he put himself 36 points clear at the top of the Championship Standings right before the summer break.

Since then, however, he has not scored a point, as he and Campos struggled in Monza and Baku. Hadjar says he and the team understand what went wrong after getting “on top of everything” during the break.

Lusail Preview: Into the unknown

The 20-year-old is now looking forward to his and the rest of the paddock’s first visit to the Lusail International Circuit and talking through his preparations he says he and Campos have received a bit of help from the Red Bull Formula 1 Team.

“I mean it’s been normal prep really, even though we have zero info of the track in F2,” he said on their planning for Qatar. “I like discovering new tracks but mostly Red Bull sent us quite a lot of information from Formula 1 from there two races there.

“So, they have a bit of knowledge there that you can translate to Formula 2 but it doesn't look like a really hard track, it looks really hard on the tyres but not technically.”