For Isack Hadjar, the Singapore Grand Prix weekend proved to be one to forget after a nightmare series of technical issues impacted almost every track session.
Even on race day things didn’t go perfectly to plan, but he was at least able to put in a storming charge from the pit lane to finish 10th.
After the race Red Bull Team Principal Laurent Mekies was quick to apologise for the problems that denied Hadjar the chance to show what he could do, noting that “we owe him one”.
Hadjar arrived at the final race of the triple header on the back of his superb drive to third in Azerbaijan, and frustration in Malaysia after a late power unit glitch saw him lose another potential P3 as he slipped back to fifth.
In Singapore things started to go wrong in Friday’s Sprint Qualifying as he again had PU issues, and had to settle for P9.
“What seemed like a good start of the day turned into really very poor performance,” he said. “I never got to have a good lap really, I’m just fighting with the car, had engine issues on the last run. Just struggling. I don’t know, it’s just weird.”
Saturday proved to be even worse when he suffered a PU failure on the third lap of the Sprint. A great effort from the RBR crew saw him switch to previously used elements for Qualifying.
However, from the start of the session he suffered a gearbox issue – the result of a perfect storm of events going wrong – and having lost fourth gear he was not able to do a flying lap. To add insult to injury, after he parked up the car was doused with extinguishant.
“Today was a disaster,” he rued. “I could have stayed back in Paris, and it would have been the same…”
The team was left with a lot of work to do, and it was decided to break parc ferme, add a new power unit to the pool, and start from the pit lane.
At the start he lost out initially to fellow pit lane starter Fernando Alonso as once again PU issues struck, but thereafter he found the pace to move up the field. He eventually made it to P10, finishing just 6s behind George Russell, who had started from 19th on the grid.
“It was good for everything that’s happened,” Hadjar said after the flag. “Definitely good pace, but I don’t know what to say. It’s just surprising we could make that race entertaining, considering it’s very difficult to overtake around that track. I’m quite happy about that. But I would have liked to make use of that pace to fight for a win.
“I just sent it, but at some point I thought this is a train, I’m never going to finish in the top 10. And then on that soft tyre, I knew I had good pace to unlock, but I didn’t think I would be that fast. So that was nice.”
To his credit, he was keen to praise his crew for their hard work: “It was challenging for my mechanics. They suffered quite a lot for just one point. So it’s definitely their weekend, and they deserve better. So we try again.”
Mekies stressed that the team had let Hadjar down with the reliability issues.
“We had a pretty horrific weekend on his side of the garage,” said the Frenchman. “We basically didn’t give him any chance to do any competitive laps before the main race on Sunday.
“We had a number of different mechanical issues – some on the PU, some on the gearbox, some other glitches. So it was really like a nightmare weekend.
“In that context, the crew – not only Isack’s crew, but it also was fully involving Max [Verstappen]’s crew who helped – the other side of the garage was under the car changing massive components all weekend long up to this morning in parc ferme before the race start, which is probably not what you want on the last of three in a triple header in hot and humid weather.
“So huge, massive congrats to the to the crew for what they’ve done. I’ve never seen such an incredible turnaround, and to then deliver a faultless race car on Sunday. Nonetheless, we have lost the chance to see Isack’s speed here. So we owe him one.”
Mekies was impressed with what Hadjar was able to achieve despite the problems: “In the race, starting last and spending 90% of the race in traffic, he still showed very, very strong pace, which only confirmed that he would probably have been up there on the sharp end of the classification.
“So it’s on us. But he certainly has shown that he had the speed with a few laps he done on Sunday.”
Verstappen’s domination of the Singapore weekend with two poles and two wins indicated just how competitive the RB22 is at the moment, and Hadjar is keen to bounce back with a clean weekend at the US GP.
“Now since Malaysia, I’m just desperate to have a car that’s working a bit better on my side to fight for a win,” he said. “Because at the moment, it’s not possible to fight. So now we need to reset, understand what happened since Sunday in Malaysia, and make sure to come back in Austin and fight for podiums.”
