‘Super painful’ mystery hits Racing Bulls car as Hadjar suffers setback

Isack Hadjar revealed he had a problem with his car during the Belgian Grand Prix, which became “super painful” as he fell to the back of the field.

The Racing Bulls driver scored a point in Saturday’s Sprint, and qualified eighth for the race on Sunday, but soon found himself falling down the pecking order at Spa.

Isack Hadjar had ‘super painful’ car issue in back-of-the-field drive

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

After starting on the fourth row, Hadjar began to fall backwards in the early stages at Spa-Francorchamps, and while he would cross the line P20 and last, he was the only driver to be lapped during the course of the race.

Having had a promising start to the weekend, he revealed a problem with his car was holding him back – though when asked about it by PlanetF1.com, he did not elaborate on the specifics of the problem.

Given the potential his weekend had, however, he was left irritated by the outcome of the race, with team-mate Liam Lawson having earned a points finish on the day.

“I had a problem with the car, but I just can’t say much, but [it was] very, very frustrating,” Hadjar said.

“It made me not competitive, and losing quite a bit of time every lap consistently, and I was aware of it. I did my best, and it was super painful at a special track like this.

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“I had no chance to fight. Even if I started way ahead, I would have been caught and overtaken.

“The pace has been super strong the whole weekend. So, what happened today makes no sense, [but] where we have ended up makes a lot of sense, so it’s a shame for the team to miss on a double-points finish.

“I needed a weekend like this. Obviously it didn’t end the way we wanted, but we had a tough run, and we are aware it happens over a very long championship, and the goal is to get back up and understand and improve, and that’s what we did here.

“We turned it around really well, and we’re confident for Budapest.”

New team principal Alan Permane was sympathetic to Hadjar’s cause, revealing his issue started early on at the Belgian Grand Prix.

“First of all, we have to apologise to Isack,” Permane said.

“He had a problem with his car that we could see from around lap 8, causing him a loss of straight-line speed and costing him a lot of time over the course of the race.

“It’s a shame because he had a great car all weekend and great pace so if it wasn’t for that, I’m sure it would have been a very different result.”

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