Isack Hadjar warns no fix in sight for ‘terrible’ Red Bull RB22

Isack Hadjar said Red Bull’s power unit is not to blame for their underwhelming performance but instead a “terrible” chassis, warning the team has “no lead” on how to fix it.

After three rounds and ahead of an enforced mini break, Red Bull finds itself sixth in the constructors’ championship, tied on points with Alpine and well off the pace of leaders Mercedes.

Isack Hadjar paints pessmisitc view of Red Bull

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Given the challenge of creating a power unit from scratch, many had expected a drop off for Red Bull this campaign.

But its problems are less to do with the engine and instead the chassis, leaving Hadjar was pessimistic about the performance of the ‘terrible’ RB22 following the Japanese GP.

“The only positive right now is that we can drive the car fast, but we have no lead on how we can make a fast one,” he said.

“We have a good power unit. Engine’s good. It is just the chassis side is terrible, just slow in the corners.”

Hadjar is not the only one to paint a confused picture with team principal Laurent Mekies suggesting the team had been “starting to scratch heads” since China.

So at first we left Melbourne thinking that we were one second off Mercedes and half a second off Ferrari,” he said. “The biggest difference in Melbourne was that McLaren looked in reach there, and actually Max came back from P20 to bump into Norris.

“Then we see that gap largely increasing in China and you have seen us starting to scratch heads there about car balance and car characteristics.

“And then here, also it didn’t look good at all on Friday, Saturday, and certainly, there is nothing to be happy about today.

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“But in terms of overall gap to competitions, not too dissimilar to the main point pictures, in terms of one second to the best guy, half a second to the next best, Ferrari, but now McLaren is at that same level, so we are distant fourth.

“That’s the reality, and I think it’s a combination of underlying performance and a layer of us not being able to extract enough from the package and to give something Max and Isack can push with.

“I’m not suggesting that it’s set up tuning, I’m just saying there is something we are wrestling with that car that adds to our underlying lack of performance.

“Now, trying to solve this sort of complex issues and trying to understand complex limitations is our core business. So as much as it feels bad when you are at the back of the top teams right now, that’s precisely what the whole company is set up to do, to get to the bottom of complex limitations like that, and bring development that can mitigate them and improve.

“It feels bad now, but I have full confidence that that’s exactly what our team is very good at.”

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