How Isack Hadjar ‘survived’ Red Bull engine drama to claim F1 Monaco GP podium

Isack Hadjar had to battle power unit problems in his Red Bull on his way to claiming a first Formula 1 podium with the team at the Monaco Grand Prix.

It was a far from straightforward weekend for Hadjar, who was immediately on the back foot after suffering a crash in first practice. Despite the early setback, the 21-year-old Frenchman impressively bounced back to take a strong fifth on the grid in qualifying.

Hadjar had to contend with engine issues throughout Sunday’s race but nevertheless was able to secure his second career podium with a fine drive to third behind Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Lewis Hamilton.

Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies was full of praise for Hadjar as he provided more detail about the nature of the problems his driver had to deal with.

“Isack’s weekend was not straightforward,” Mekies told media including Crash.net. “Obviously he got a big setback in FP1 when he crashed the car.

“The team did a fantastic job to manage to put his car back into one piece and to manage to give him some FP2 time. A few minutes before the beginning of FP2, you had Max in the car ready to go and all of the mechanics had gone to try and gain time with Isack in the few minutes they had before Max had to go out. It was a massive effort.

“Honestly, he paid us back in the way he has managed to reset, in the way he has managed to find his confidence back. Not straight away in FP2, but through FP3 and ultimately to produce a very strong qualifying performance.

“In the race, it was not trouble-free either. We battled a number of issues on his car. From quite early in the race, we had a lot less engine power and that has a lot of consequences on the energy management and so forth and so on.

“He had a very, very hard time. The issues became quite big after he went through the run-off in the chicane. He managed to survive that to get P3 eventually.”

Explaining the power unit woes, Hadjar said: “I think very early, from I would say Lap 12, something like that, I started having driveability issues and it was just undriveable,” Hadjar explained.

“In Monaco, especially here, it’s not like you can allow yourself to skip using first gear, second gear, and this is where the problem was. It was very hard to drive. I was down on power at some point.

“Also on the final restart, on that start, still need to figure out our problems, but I kept pushing and we’re here. I’m happy.”

Hadjar had several fiery exchanges over team radio about the engine dramas, but Mekies felt he handled the situation well all things considered. 

“It’s always very difficult for the driver in the car to understand what’s going on when you have an issue. In that case, he could not know exactly how much engine power he was losing,” Mekies added.

“The implication of the loss of that ICE power on the rest of the management was massive for the way these PUs are working. From his standpoint, it’s like ‘what’s going on?’ So we understand the emotions.

“I think he has managed to keep the car alive. The team has managed to communicate to him a number of changes to keep the car alive. It’s not a pleasant thing to do around here, to keep changing switches to keep the car alive, but nonetheless it worked.

“So as a team they did a good job. As we all gain experience, I am sure you will see the volume of the conversations go down.”

Hadjar kept his podium finish after his Red Bull team was cleared of a technical infringement during a late red flag.

“There was quite an amount of confusion there, but we were trying to rectify the issue,” Mekies explained. “We got instructed to leave the car in the original spec, which we did. You simply follow the instruction that is given to you by the FIA, and that is what we did.”