Red Bull issued key F1 demand by Isack Hadjar amid ‘I’m no machine’ remark

Isack Hadjar has urged Red Bull to remedy a major Achilles’ heel by Isack Hadjar, after it undid his qualifying performance for the Formula 1 Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix.

The Frenchman lined-up sixth on the grid for the race, but tumbled down the order after his RB22 left the slot at lights out with a stutter and a whimper.

Struggling to get off the line has been a common issue for the Milton Keynes-based squad, a trait caused by the new power unit regulations and also suffered by other teams.

After Max Verstappen sluggishly crept off the grid in Monaco – leading to his retirement – Red Bull would have been hoping for better in Barcelona, but Hadjar revealed after the race that poor starts were consistent across all practices over the weekend.

“The whole weekend has been like this for me,” he told media, including Motorsport Week.

“I think out of the six practice starts we had the whole weekend, it was the worst. It had to happen on the grid. I stalled twice, which I never did the whole season.

“We need to fix these issues. The procedure is way too complicated, and I’m not a computer, I’m not a machine. I can’t be 0.0001 per cent precise. It’s not working.”

Hadjar was able to work his way back through the field and finish sixth, exactly where he had started, with Verstappen fourth, the best part of a minute behind winner Lewis Hamilton.

Hadjar added that in the current conditions “you clear the midfield cars quite easy, and then the top cars are nowhere near you, so then it’s a boring race.

“But to be fair, we did better than I expected for a track like that with these conditions.”