Starting from the pit lane is a brutal way to spend a Grand Prix weekend, but Isack Hadjar turned a disaster into a single hard-fought point at the Marina Bay street circuit. The Red Bull driver fought his way through the field to claim P10 in the 62-lap race, snatching that final point away from Alpine's Pierre Gasly during the closing laps.
That recovery capped off a deeply painful weekend for the Frenchman. Technical issues with his RB22 machine wrecked his event from the start, forcing him out of the Sprint entirely and keeping him from putting down a single lap time in Grand Prix Qualifying. The team had to install new power unit changes just to get him out of the pit lane for Sunday.
It's good to have had everything new today during the race. At the same time, it's not like we know how to avoid these issues yet,
"At some point I was nearly dead last," Hadjar admitted after the race, noting that Fernando overtook him and software gremlins added to the misery. Things were so grim that the medium tyre phase was purely about survival. "On the medium it was just damage limitation – I feel like I knew it was the weaker compound this weekend and the soft was working really well."
Once he bolted on the soft rubber, though, the machine came alive. With very few laps left to work with, it was a flat-out sprint to the flag. "I enjoyed it honestly. I was flat-out, not much management and good overtakes," he said.
His charge brought him home just six seconds behind the Mercedes of George Russell, who had also started from the back of the grid. Further up the road, team mate Max Verstappen took the victory, cementing a strong day for Red Bull even if reliability remains a massive dark cloud over the garage.
"It's good to have had everything new today during the race. At the same time, it's not like we know how to avoid these issues yet," Hadjar explained, pointing out that there are no guarantees the problems won't return before the next rounds. That leaves a massive mountain of investigation for the team over the next two weeks. But with the raw speed he demonstrated from the very back, the confidence is clearly there.
