Jack Aitken: “I look in many directions”

Jack, on the one hand your season has been complicated in Formula 2, but you did run in F1. How do you analyze 2020?

It’s clear that it’s been a very strange season. First really difficult in F2, for several reasons. We suffered from the last minute departure of some of the team's staff, just before the start of the season. There was also the arrival of 18-inch tires which gave us a lot of trouble. Overall, F2 is a really tough championship. And all these reasons mean that we were not able to achieve our objectives, which is a shame. We still had some good moments, with a double podium at Silverstone. And at the same time, despite the difficulties in F2, it was obviously great to be able to finish in style with a Formula 1 Grand Prix (Sakhir. Ed.), my first.

With three victories under your belt in 2019 in F2 already with Campos, a second-rate team, we thought you would be able to play up front this year. What went wrong?

It's true that we had a lot of success with Campos in 2019, and that's also what pushed me to stay with them in 2020. Then I like the guys on the team so much, they do an outstanding job and give 100%. I think most of the F2 teams were of a very high level, with such resources and such an approach that we would have said of mini-F1 teams. I heard that some of them, in addition to the twelve technical people authorized on the circuit, relied on another group of engineers who worked from the hotel... and lots of other things like that. It was simply impossible for us to compete with teams with those kinds of resources. We have never managed to find the right rhythm as a team, and when you are in this situation, it is difficult to get out of it because the time spent on track in Formula 2 is very limited.

We would have thought that after a solid year in 2019, we would have found you in a top team in 2020…

Honestly, going to a top team was never on the table for budget reasons. The economic reality is what it is, and we didn’t have the means to do that. We spoke with Campos about the possibility of continuing with them. We knew it would be hard for the economic reasons mentioned. But I liked the atmosphere in the team so much that I wanted to stay and Adrian Campos was very accommodating to ensure that we could continue together, knowing that it was a big financial effort on their part, which which makes me even more grateful for the work done.

Find the full interview with Jack Aitken in issue 2293 of AUTOhebdo.