Step back
No repeat of the Melbourne miracle for Isack Hadjar in Shanghai, at least not in today’s qualifying that defined the starting grid for tomorrow’s Sprint. The Red Bull Frenchman in fact qualified for SQ3 but was then unable to go further than the tenth time, ending up even conceding two seconds and two tenths from George Russell’s best time.
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A real slap in the face for him – who for long stretches of this day had managed to lap on the times of teammate Max Verstappen – and for the whole of Red Bull. The Milton Keynes team in fact seemed to have taken an evident step back in the hierarchy compared to what was seen in Australia.
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“I can consider myself satisfied with the lap I did, it was good – commented Hadjar – I’m not too far from Max, which is positive, but I don’t understand what happened to our pace and why we lost half a second. We need a bit more in all areas to be competitive tomorrow. Today we struggled with grip and our power was not at the level we wanted. The gap to McLaren and Ferrari was greater than last weekend, so we need to understand why. There is still a lot to play for in the rest of the weekend“, concluded Red Bull’s #6.
