Despite scoring two race wins this season, including a maiden victory in Monaco as well as a chaotic first Feature Race win in Baku, Dennis Hauger is currently only P12 in the Formula 2 Drivers’ Standings. Coming into Spa, with four rounds left, F1 Feeder Series spoke to the Norwegian about regaining his pace and the remainder of the season.
By Tyler Foster
It’s been nearly three months since Hauger’s impressive victory in Baku, but since then the results have dried up, with fourth place in the Feature Race at Austria being his only points scoring finish. The Prema driver’s struggles can be traced back to his poor performances in qualifying. After he began to see an upturn in that department towards the halfway stage of the season, Hauger has averaged a disappointing qualifying position of 13.5 in the four F2 race weekends since Baku.
We spoke to Hauger on Thursday about how he’s going about trying to rediscover the pace that led to his strong midseason results.
“First of all, obviously try to get the pure pace we’ve had back and just take race-by-race and at this stage just try to do the best job we can per weekend and not focus too much on it [the championship standings].”
Scoring just 12 points in four rounds is not the performance expected of a Prema driver, especially a reigning Formula 3 champion. With all these disappointing results comes frustration, not just from Red Bull as a member of their junior team, not just from Prema as two-time reigning Constructors’ champions, but also from Hauger himself. This rut has been a difficult period for Hauger, and one that he will be looking to break from this weekend in Spa.
We asked Hauger just how tough that period was for him, and how he has used the Summer break to recuperate and ready himself for the final charge of the season.
Really looking forward to getting back in the car now after the summer and try to get some trophies
“No, it’s been great,” Hauger joked. “Obviously, it’s been a bit of a restless month with ups and downs. Especially after Baku, coming from two wins in two race weekends and then obviously going a bit downhill from there has not been easy, but I think over the Summer we’ve sort of reset a bit and tried to get on top of things and done some work on the simulator to really reset and recharge for the triple header. Really looking forward to getting back in the car now after the summer and try to get some trophies.”
With the current F2 standings being extremely compact in the midfield, just 25 points covers Hauger in P12 to his Prema teammate Jehan Daruvala in P5. This highlights that with four rounds to go, there is still a lot left to play for.
Header photo credit: Red Bull Content Pool
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