Isack Hadjar still frustrated after his withdrawal: "I'm stupidly throwing points away"

Isack Hadjar's day ended as abruptly as it had begun to get complicated. The Frenchman caught his front left wheel in turn 14, breaking his suspension completely. Red BullUncontrollable, he ended his Grand Prix in the wall on the left side at turn 15. A clean crash, with no way out, which dashed the hopes raised at the start of the weekend. The driver escaped the incident uninjured, but the frustration is very real.

Because Miami represented an opportunity. Red Bull had brought several upgrades to both cars this weekend, and Max Verstappen had demonstrated in qualifying that these developments were a step in the right direction — the four-time world champion finishing fifth, just eight-tenths of a second behind George Russell. Isack Hadjar, meanwhile, had qualified ninth, but started from pit lane — parts of the left and right floorboards of the car number 6 exceeding the regulatory reference volume by 2 mm. "I'm angry because the pace was good, I was moving up so easily that I'm stupidly throwing points away. I'm really frustrated right now and on top of that I damaged the car so that counts too."

"I wasn't very smart."

The Frenchman had, however, had no problem with this sequence up until then: “All weekend I was on the limit and I was comfortable with that limit, but this time it didn't work out. I wasn't precise enough and I took too many risks. In a 57-lap race, it's normal that at some point there's contact. I wasn't very smart.” A self-criticism that we hear quite often from the Red Bull driver.

At 21, Isack Hadjar is going through a learning curve in his first season with a world champion team. Ups and downs are part of the process, and Red Bull knows it. The Austrian team is also discovering these brand-new regulations and is still progressing at its own pace, behind the Mercedes Benz, McLaren et Classic Ferrari for saleMiami still leaves a bitter taste for Red Bull: an improved car, a weekend that could have been positive, but a retirement for the Frenchman and a fifth-place finish for Max Verstappen, whom they would have liked to see climb back up the order. See you in Montreal in three weeks to put this behind them.

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