Isack Hadjar was livid with himself after he made a mistake at the end of his final lap in qualifying.
Both Racing Bulls drivers set times at the beginning and end of Q3. Hadjar’s team mate Liam Lawson was quicker than him by a tenth of a second on their first runs.
Lawson did not improve his time on his final run, when the track was wetter. However Hadjar was nine tenths of a second quicker through the first two sectors than he had been on his first run.
He lost his advantage as he came out of turn 16, the last significant corner on the lap, and ran too wide over the kerb, losing speed all the way down the long acceleration zone which leads to the finishing line.
Hadjar immediately realised his mistake and began punching his steering wheel in fury as he came out of the corner, while screaming “fuck” on his radio.
“I’m an absolute idiot,” he fumed as he drove back to the pits. “What the hell is that?”
“Sorry Isack,” his race engineer Pierre Hamelin replied consolingly. “You were a good chunk ahead, sector two.”
Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and
“I know,” Hadjar answered. “And I knew I took some fucking margin going into this corner, and the wind just kept pushing me, I can’t fucking believe it.”
“I just do everything perfect except the fucking final kerb,” he concluded. “Idiot. Idiot!”
While Lawson’s lap remained quick enough for third place, Hadjar fell to eighth on the grid.
“We managed the whole session perfectly until the final corner of the final lap, where I went a bit too hard over the kerb and lost eight tenths,” said Hadjar after the session. Had he gained that much time he would have taken second on the grid.
Miss nothing from RaceFans
Get a daily email with all our latest stories – and nothing else. No marketing, no ads. Sign up here:
