Red Bull Racing driver Isack Hadjar at a loss: “It’s just strange”

The fact that Isack Hadjar had to settle for ninth place at the end of the final sprint qualifying session of the year was not solely down to an unintentional run-off, which resulted in his SQ3 lap time being disallowed. The disallowed lap was also very slow at 1:32.048 minutes, leaving him almost nine tenths of a second behind the fastest time set by his team-mate Max Verstappen, who had secured pole position for the mini-race at the Marina Bay Street Circuit.

Hadjar had also been significantly slower than the four-time champion and Bahrain GP winner in the two qualifying segments prior to that: in the first segment, he was seven tenths off Verstappen’s time, whilst his personal best in the middle segment was 0.246 seconds slower than that of his team-mate.

The Frenchman appeared understandably at a loss after the qualifying session when he spoke to the TV cameras. “What looked like a good start to the day turned into a very poor performance. I felt very comfortable straight away in the first free practice session, but that was on the hard compound – and to be honest, that’s about it for the positives,” he admitted.

Isack Hadjar: Struggling with his own F1 car

“I never really managed to put in a good lap. I’m struggling with the car. In the last race, I then had problems with the engine. It was very tricky; I really had to fight. I don’t know, it’s just strange,” added the 22-year-old.

When asked whether he’d realised straight away that he couldn’t get to grips with the soft tyres, Hadjar said: “No, I don’t know. It was clear that the soft tyres were a big step up compared to the medium compound. They offered much more grip, but in the end that didn’t matter much, as all the other drivers were on the softs too. I just had the feeling that the car is undriveable at the moment.”

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