Red Bull Racing team boss Laurent Mekies is extremely satisfied with the speed of Isack Hadjar during the Australian Grand Prix. In his first race for the team from Milton Keynes, the Frenchman managed to achieve a good third place in qualifying, after which he unfortunately had an engine problem during the race.
But from the first moment on, Hadjar has done excellently in Melbourne. That is of course good news for Red Bull Racing, but also for Max Verstappen. The Dutchman finally has a teammate who could help him battle at the front of the field later this season – or next year.
In recent seasons, Verstappen had to do it alone and received no help from his teammates, who were all stuck in midfield. As a result, Max often competed against two drivers from one team and therefore had a tactical disadvantage. That now seems to be gone, due to Hadjar’s strong performance in Australia.
“He had a fantastic weekend”team boss Laurent Mekies is full of praise for his compatriot. “He came here after a fairly limited number of kilometers during the winter tests. Yet he was immediately there from FP1 on Friday. We were able to divide the test program among the cars and thus collect twice as much information.” That is also an additional advantage for Verstappen and Red Bull.
“He started qualifying under these rules for the first time and did an absolutely fantastic job. Putting the car in P3 was the highest possible for us on Saturday. Hats off to him. On Sunday he had a great start, but we didn’t charge the battery. We could have fought with McLaren with our pace,” Mekies said about Hadjar’s race.
Isack Hadjar himself was disappointed by the fact that he could not finish the race in Melbourne. The encouraging words from his team boss are nice, but he would have preferred to just achieve a good result in the first race of the year. That ultimately did not work due to problems with his car – problems that were piling up, he said after the race.
“I can’t even count how many problems I had with the car! It was really no fun. This is not what I wanted. I would have preferred if the car behaved like it did on Friday; then the pace was good, the acceleration was consistent. That would have been nice. I’m sure I would have taken the lead thanks to my start and then we would have had fun with the guys. I would have liked to finish the race.”
