Hadjar says Red Bull had P4 pace in Austria

Isack Hadjar said Red Bull’s upgraded RB22 was the second-fastest race car in Austria after he climbed from eighth on the grid to sixth and came away believing fourth place had been within reach.

Hadjar said the result did not fully reflect his pace because a deployment issue in qualifying left him starting too far back. Speaking after the race to Crash.net and Motorsport.com, he said “if we had started a bit further up the grid” and “if it wasn’t for deployment issues,” “there was a fourth place in the locker.” Starting eighth meant he had to work past both McLaren drivers before he could attack the cars ahead.

That charge also gave him a different kind of race. Hadjar told RacingNews365 and Crash.net that he could not remember “a race in my career where I fought with the big boys, like the Ferrari, the McLarens,” calling those battles “good fun” and “a first.” On his way to sixth he found himself racing Lewis Hamilton, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, and said Red Bull handled those fights “quite well.”

The standout point for Hadjar was what the weekend said about the car. He said the Austria update made a clear difference over a race stint. “Definitely feel it in the race pace,” he said, adding: “Today we had the second quickest car.” He said Red Bull usually suffers more in race trim than in qualifying, but in Austria that balance was “more equal,” which he described as “very encouraging.”

That was a notable shift from Saturday, when Hadjar left qualifying frustrated in eighth after saying he could not drive in his usual style under braking. He told Crash.net: “Just can't smash the brakes, really,” explaining that as a late, heavy braker he had not been able to use one of his main strengths. “I lock everything,” he said after qualifying, while also complaining that he was unhappy with how the straight-line deployment had been optimized.

The braking issue did not disappear in the race. Hadjar said he suffered “quite a few lockups” and had “very poor confidence,” forcing him to leave margin at each braking zone. He added that he was not alone in that struggle and suggested the conditions played a part, with hot track temperatures and tyres that “felt very poor.”

Even with those limitations, Hadjar saw Austria as evidence that Red Bull’s development path is moving in the right direction. He said the team had already made “a big step forward” with its first update in Miami and that Austria brought another gain in race trim. On one lap, he said, the car was still not at Mercedes’ level, but the progress shown on Sunday left him convinced the latest step was real.