Racing
© Jonathan Borba
Karun Chandhok has warned that Isack Hadjar’s troubled Miami Grand Prix weekend could become “the beginning of the spiral” after the Red Bull driver fell back to an eight-to-nine-tenth gap to Max Verstappen before crashing out on lap six.
The concern for Chandhok, the former Formula 1 driver speaking on Sky F1, was not just the accident itself but what it suggested about Hadjar’s standing in Red Bull’s upgraded car. “What is telling for me is we got to Japan, Hadjar and Verstappen were nip and tuck,” Chandhok said. “We all thought ‘that’s a bit odd at Suzuka, Max Verstappen circuit. What’s going on here?’ But I feel like as soon as the car has improved, that envelope performance has gone forward, and they’re suddenly chasing the front rows and pole positions, we’re back to that eight or nine tenths.”
Miami exposed that gap across the competitive sessions. Verstappen was comfortably ahead in sprint qualifying and again in grand prix qualifying, a sharp change from the closer comparison Hadjar had shown earlier in the season.
Hadjar’s weekend then unraveled completely. After qualifying ninth, he was forced to start from the pit lane when Red Bull discovered an illegal component on his car. Laurent Mekies, Red Bull team principal, said the issue was a compulsory part that was “two millimetres too wide” and admitted the team should have caught it in its routine checks.
That left Hadjar trying to recover from the back, and he had climbed to 15th by lap five when the race ended. He clipped the inside wall at the chicane, damaging the car before hitting the outside barrier. Chandhok said that was exactly the kind of setback Hadjar did not need after such a difficult weekend. “He needed mileage to just get a bit of confidence back,” he said. “I hope that this isn’t the beginning of the spiral for him, like we saw with the previous five, six team-mates. That eight, nine-tenths gap was back again.”
Hadjar did not hide his own responsibility. Speaking to Sky Sports F1, the 21-year-old said he had overreached while trying to make progress through the field. “I was too eager and too excited about making those moves and just ruined myself,” Hadjar said. “It was easy to overtake and [I] should have been more cautious. There was no point trying to flirt with the limit in this corner. So I’m really, really pissed off.”
He also admitted the wider issue ran beyond the crash. “It’s the first time I really struggle with my overall pace,” Hadjar said. “This is new and I really need to dig deep because I don’t want another weekend like this.” Even so, he believed the upgraded car had taken a step forward, using Verstappen’s pace as the clearest evidence that the potential was there if he could put the lap together.
Mekies has pushed back against the idea that Miami marks a deeper Red Bull problem for Hadjar. He said the team was “not worried” and described the event as a weekend shaped by errors on both sides. Mekies also argued Hadjar’s race pace had looked promising before the crash and pointed to the team’s own role in making the job harder by sending him to the pit lane after the legality mistake.
“I don’t think we should qualify that as a worry,” Mekies told media including Crash.net. “We had a tough weekend. This has not helped our performance. In terms of driving and in terms of rhythm, he still didn’t get into the right rhythm. I think he would have been strong in the race, and was strong for the little he could have shown.” He added: “We certainly didn’t have a clean weekend. We didn’t help him either by sending him from the back of the grid after our mistake with the legality of the car. So no, not worried.”
The tension now is whether Miami was a one-off collapse or the first clear sign that Red Bull’s improving package has reopened the familiar gap to Verstappen. Montreal will matter less for the headline result than for whether Hadjar can stop the slide before one bad weekend turns into the confidence loss Chandhok fears.