Hauger’s Guest Column: Finding my racing rhythm wasn’t easy

14 June 2022

Going from zero to hero was the story of Dennis Hauger’s Baku weekend – scoring his highest Qualifying result in Formula 2 so far on Friday, before dramatically crashing out of the points during the following day’s Sprint Race.

Spotting a chance at redemption in Sunday’s Feature Race, the PREMA Racing driver stayed out of trouble whilst his rivals faltered around him to bring home his second F2 victory in as many rounds and rocketing him up to fifth in the standings.

We handed control of the sixth Guest Column of the season over to the Norwegian racer to pen his thoughts on a topsy-turvy round in Azerbaijan and how he plans to keep his momentum as the Championship heads to Silverstone in a fortnight’s time.

ONE GOOD POINT – QUALIFYING

I think Qualifying was definitely a stronger point for us – P3, which is my best result of the season in Qualifying. That’s the main thing we had to work on this weekend and we made it, so I think that’s a strength we’ll take with us to the next one.

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ONE BAD POINT – SPRINT RACE CRASH

The crash was the worst. After the start we had, I was in the wrong gear so I lost quite a few positions. To be honest, the pace was good but I overshot Turn 3 and went into the wall. Obviously, that was a downside of the weekend but in the end, it helped me learn. I think it’s something to take with us going forward.

WHAT I LEARNED – DRIVING TECHNIQUES

Qualifying was a learning point, but also just in general, I think this track has some techniques that I’ve been struggling with this season. We made a good step there in terms of what we need to do and how I need to drive this car. That was a good learning process for me to make the next step forward and hopefully we can keep that progression going.

FANS MAY HAVE MISSED – PREMA’S NEW MASCOT

Obviously, we have fun in the team. My second engineer has Covid so he put a picture of himself on the wall and taped a photo to a mascot, that’s a funny one!

NEXT UP – SILVERSTONE

I was there in 2020 but haven’t really done a lot of races there. I think it’s a cool track, it’s going to be interesting to see, especially with F2. Hopefully, we can just keep the rhythm we’ve had the last few rounds. I think now that we’ve made some steps, we can keep pushing those and start to be up there to fight for the trophies.