That is a brutal way for a Saturday to end. Isack Hadjar was left stranded at the back of the grid for Sunday's Grand Prix at the Marina Bay Circuit after a gearbox fault completely robbed him of a timed lap in qualifying.
Now, here is the thing about the Frenchman's weekend: it has been an absolute disaster of reliability. He already lost a potential podium in Malaysia due to a battery issue, and then he had to retire from the Singapore Sprint because of a separate mechanical failure. When his mechanics managed to fix his machine ahead of qualifying, he was so grateful he jumped on the radio to thank them. That hope lasted all of one sector.
He went deep into Turn 8, the engine died, and he was forced to limp the beast back to the garage at a slow speed. Even though he managed to get going briefly, the damage was done. "What’s funny is that I felt nice in Sector 1, until in Turn 8 I broke the gearbox, basically," Hadjar explained. "That’s it. I tried to… I don’t even know why we kept going."
He did not want to leave the car stranded on track, so he brought it back to the pit lane despite knowing the session was over for him. But the frustration is entirely justified when you look at how the weekend has gone. "Now I’m really, really frustrated, because we’ve had issues in every session but FP1," he said. He added that he is simply craving track time, and missing out on the adrenaline of qualifying leaves him genuinely angry.
Yet, the garage was a tale of two entirely different worlds. Team mate Max Verstappen put his RB22 right on top, securing the 50th pole position of his Grand Prix career. That pace proved the machine is more than capable of winning at the front, which only makes the team's failures on the other side of the garage sting that much more.
Team Principal Laurent Mekies held his hands up and took the blame for the sheer volume of bad luck dumped on the young driver at a venue where passing other cars is famously difficult. "We need to send a good apology to Isack, really," the team boss told F1 TV after the session, noting the power unit trouble in the morning Sprint and the gearbox failure in qualifying. Mekies vowed that they will fight from the back on Sunday to try and salvage some points, but for now, the anger is entirely real.
