Here's the thing about Friday at the Marina Bay Street Circuit: while Red Bull team mate Max Verstappen flew to pole position for the Sprint—clutching strong pace fresh off the team's victory in Malaysia—Isack Hadjar was left fighting an entirely different beast. The 22-year-old Frenchman wound up down in ninth place after a session that quickly unraveled.
It was a bitter pill for a driver who started the day feeling remarkably comfortable right out of the gate in FP1. But that early promise vanished completely when the real pressure hit, leaving Hadjar to sum up the day bluntly as a very poor performance.
Problems compounded quickly on track. Not only did Hadjar have a lap time deleted in SQ3 after exceeding track limits, but he also ran into engine issues on his final run. He admitted he never managed to string together a clean lap, spending the entire session wrestling with a machine that simply refused to cooperate.
When asked about the sudden shift onto the soft compound—a tyre he had skipped during the day's sole practice session—Hadjar noted that while the soft brought a huge step in grip compared to the medium, it ultimately changed nothing since everyone else was running the exact same rubber. The raw pace just wasn't there.
"I just don't feel like it's driveable right now," Hadjar said of the car, leaving the team with plenty of questions to answer before the Sprint. So, while Verstappen sits pretty at the very front of the grid, the side of the garage belonging to the young Frenchman faces an uphill battle to tame a chassis that currently refuses to be driven.
