Isack Hadjar had an early setback in his time as a Red Bull driver, crashing on day two of the F1 Barcelona Shakedown. The incident happened in the last half-hour of a session already limited by rain.
There isn’t any public video footage since the session was closed to media, but reports suggest he lost control at the final corner and hit the wall backwards, damaging his rear wing.
Hadjar had set a good pace on Monday with the fastest lap of the day. Although most of Tuesday’s work was done before the crash, he’ll be hoping it doesn’t affect Red Bull’s plans for the rest of their week.
The rules for this year’s Shakedown allow teams to run only one of the final three days if they’ve already used up their first two.
Red Bull protects Isack Hadjar after his crash in Barcelona
Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies tried to downplay Hadjar’s mistake in comments made to F1’s official channels on Tuesday evening.
Mekies focused more on the positives from Monday rather than dwelling on the crash. He also has experience with the Frenchman from their time together at Racing Bulls before taking over for Christian Horner in July.
“Look, it was a very tricky condition this afternoon, so very unfortunate that it finished that way, but it’s part of the game,” he said. “Again, very tricky, a lot of work to do on many aspects and these sort of things can happen.”
“These difficulties today came after a very, very positive day yesterday in terms of the number of laps Isack could complete in the car and in terms of his learning and development and feedback to the engineers.”
How would Helmut Marko have reacted to Isack Hadjar’s crash?
In his first year as team principal, Mekies is expected to move Red Bull away from the harsher approach that Horner and especially Helmut Marko were known for when it came to young drivers.
With Horner dismissed and Marko also gone, Mekies has begun rethinking how Red Bull supports Verstappen’s teammates. He believes that giving drivers full backing is key to getting the best out of them.
“Of course, you don’t want any driver error. But we didn’t lose much information. I guess a few drivers spun. The track was drying and tricky at the end,” he said.
“Yesterday we had a very good day with a lot of mileage, so there’s no stress in terms of information.”
Mekies wasn’t surprised by the mistake given the conditions: “The most important thing for him is what he will take from it because it was quite an eventful shakedown already yesterday with a number of incidents.”
He added: “So already this morning we had another interruption of running for some small issue unrelated to today’s crash, which meant they had limited mileage up until that point.”
The team appears content with Hadjar’s overall progress across both days, though this week’s running hasn’t been without setbacks.
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