Isack Hadjar experienced an eventful opening day during the Monaco GP. The Red Bull driver crashed in the first free practice after a sudden moment of oversteer coming out of the swimming pool section, causing his Racing Bulls to end up in the guardrail. Especially the second impact, when the car swung around after the first touch, caused significant damage and forced the team to extensive repair work.
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The Frenchman admitted afterwards that the crash came completely unexpectedly. “It was going pretty well,” Hadjar said about his session up to that point. “Actually, I think I drove a few good laps and built up confidence, and just when I had that confidence, that moment happened. It really caught me off guard. I really didn’t expect to lose control there. It’s also not the kind of crash you often see here, such a loss of the rear, so I was surprised and it was certainly a heavy blow.”
Regaining Confidence
Despite the hard work of the mechanics, Hadjar missed the first fifteen minutes of the second free practice due to the repair work. Afterwards, however, he managed to fight his way back to the sixth fastest time of the session, although he admitted that he was initially mainly focused on regaining his confidence. “I was trying to rebuild my confidence,” he admitted. “I really didn’t take any risks and just experimented a bit more. It took a while to get there and there’s still a lot to improve, but it certainly felt good towards the end, so let’s see what we can find for tomorrow tonight.”
With Ferrari at the top of the timesheets and Mercedes also performing strongly, Hadjar still sees work to be done for Red Bull. Nevertheless, he explicitly focuses his sights on the competition from Brackley. Asked if his team can compete at the front this weekend, he replied: “I definitely want to take on Mercedes. I think the top three are very strong and have a good flow, so we need a very strong FP3 to get things going and catch up. But hopefully we’ll get the most out of it and go into qualifying with the same build-up.”
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