Isack Hadjar has claimed his Red Bull Formula 1 car was undriveable to the point that it was dangerous in the Japanese Grand Prix.
Having qualified eighth at Suzuka, Hadjar lost three places in the first two laps, which “really sucked”, on his way to a 12th-place finish.
Asked about the poor result, the Frenchman said: “It's not even 1% of how bad this race was. So it's no big deal. It's just I need to understand why that battery situation, and so early. Because I was comfortable in eighth. The plan was to fight Pierre [Gasly], which we were doing, and it all faded away with an empty battery. And then you're just powerless.”
Hadjar still had a decent chance of points from 11th, but was offered feisty resistance by Racing Bulls rookie Arvid Lindblad, who was given a black-and-white last-warning flag for moving under braking before the chicane – which the Red Bull driver branded as “not very useful for both of us, but it's OK, he's young”.
Then Hadjar was among the drivers who pitted before the safety car intervention, which dropped him to 13th. He did overtake Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto to fight back to 11th, enjoying his battles with the Audis, but eventually was repassed by the German and therefore finished 12th.
“We didn’t have good pace anyway,” the Hadjar lamented on Canal+. “That was expected, but it was worse than earlier in the weekend. It was really, really undriveable – it even was dangerous. So that was tricky.”
And as F1 goes into a five-week break following the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian grands prix, Hadjar has little cause for optimism.
“The only positive right now is that I can drive the car fast. But we have no lead on how we can make the car fast,” he tersely said, having scored just four points over the first three rounds of the season.
Additional reporting by Jake Boxall-Legge
