Racing
© Adrian Hernandez
Isack Hadjar is set to be excluded from Miami Grand Prix qualifying after FIA scrutineering found both sides of his Red Bull’s floor board protruded 2mm beyond the permitted reference volume, a breach that would wipe out his ninth place and send him to a pitlane start.
In his post-qualifying report to the stewards, FIA technical delegate Jo Bauer wrote that “legality volumes were checked on car number 06” and that the “lhs [left-hand side] and rhs [right-hand side] floor board” were “protruding 2mm out of the reference volume RV-FLOOR BOARD.” Bauer added that the car did not comply with “Article C3.5.5 of the Formula 1 Technical Regulation” and referred the matter to the stewards for consideration.
Because the issue is a technical infringement, Hadjar is expected to be disqualified from the qualifying classification. That would strip him of his fifth-row grid slot after a session in which he had done enough to reach Q3 and qualify ninth.
The decision deepens what was already a split result for Red Bull in Miami. While Hadjar was left trying to limit the damage in the lower half of the top 10, Max Verstappen put the other RB22 on the front row in second behind polesitter Andrea Kimi Antonelli.
Before the scrutineering issue emerged, Hadjar had described a difficult session in changing conditions. Isack Hadjar, the Red Bull driver, said the balance had been hard to manage around Miami’s low-grip surface and high track temperatures, while a lack of straight-line speed left him unable to close on Verstappen.
“The car was very hard to drive, it was very fast. In Q3 I just couldn't put it all together and on the other side we have no straight line speed,” Hadjar said after qualifying.
He said Miami was “a very tricky track, very low grip with high track temperature” and “completely different” from the opening rounds, adding that Verstappen had adapted better to those conditions. Hadjar said he had made “big progress” in the corners compared to the previous day, but could not clean up the lap in the way Verstappen did and was “missing in every straight.”
Those performance concerns are now secondary. Instead of starting from the position he earned in Q3, Hadjar is on course to begin Sunday’s race from the pit lane, turning a modest qualifying result into a much bigger setback.