Racing
© Morio
Isack Hadjar said his fifth-place finish in the British Grand Prix was “a waste of a race” after a mid-race loss of aerodynamic load wrecked his pace until Red Bull changed the front wing at Silverstone.
Hadjar’s frustration centered on how competitive the race had felt at the start. He said he launched well and had the speed to stay with the car ahead through the opening laps, a sign that Red Bull had the potential for more than the result ultimately showed. Speaking to media including RacingNews365, Hadjar said: “Just a very good start this time, very good.” He added: “Just the pace in the first three laps, very nice. I was kind of kind with Max. But it's good to follow him, which I was doing really well.”
That early promise faded quickly in the 52-lap race. Hadjar said the car suddenly lost performance and left him searching for an explanation from the cockpit. His first thought was that he had caused the problem himself through tyre management, especially once the pace did not recover after he switched to a new set of hard tyres.
“And then suddenly a huge drop off of pace,” Hadjar said. “[I thought] ‘OK, maybe it’s something wrong I did in terms of tyre management.’ I went on the hard, new tyres [and I had] no pace. I was very confused.”
The issue, he later learned, was not linked to his tyres at all. Hadjar said the team informed him that the car was missing aerodynamic load, a problem that explained why the pace loss had felt so abrupt and so severe. Red Bull responded by replacing the front wing during a pit stop, and Hadjar said the effect was immediate.
He said: “We were missing load on the car.” Once the new front wing was fitted, “I nearly gained two seconds straight away,” a turnaround that only deepened his sense that a stronger result had slipped away. “A waste of a race, really,” he said.
That verdict carried extra weight because Hadjar still came away with a strong finish. Fifth place extended his run to five consecutive points-scoring results, and every one of those finishes has been inside the top six. In pure championship terms, Silverstone added another solid haul.
But from Hadjar’s perspective, the result also underlined the scale of the missed opportunity. A race that began with the pace to run strongly in the lead group became an exercise in damage limitation until the front wing change restored the car. Finishing fifth despite that problem suggested the underlying performance was much better than the classification alone showed.