Red Bull Racing is experiencing massively contrasting fortunes at the 2026 Singapore Grand Prix. While Max Verstappen successfully secured pole position for Sunday’s main event, his team-mate, Isack Hadjar, endured an absolute mechanical nightmare under the floodlights of the Marina Bay Street Circuit.
After suffering a terminal power unit failure that forced him to retire from Saturday’s earlier Sprint race, the Red Bull mechanics completed an incredible, hurried effort to replace the engine components ahead of the evening qualifying session. However, the rapid repairs simply didn’t hold up.
During Q1, Hadjar reported over the team radio that his engine had shut off, forcing him to limp back to the garage. On a subsequent attempt to set a lap, he completely lost all of his gears due to a secondary gearbox failure. As a result, the French driver failed to set a representative time and officially qualified dead last in 22nd place – though he will actually start 21st due to a mandatory engine penalty previously applied to Mercedes driver George Russell.
“I want to drive”
When asked by Sky Sports F1 presenter Craig Slater if knowing the gearbox failure wasn’t his fault made the disastrous result easier to digest, Hadjar completely dismissed the notion.
“No, I want to drive. Honestly, I don’t care about P22. I just want to get out there and do my thing. Get to it,” Hadjar stated.
Isack Hadjar, Red Bull Racing
Photo by: Clive Mason / Getty Images
The furious driver is particularly agitated about wasting premium track time when he feels the car possesses the underlying pace to advance through the elimination rounds.
“I have plenty of soft tyres in the garage right now that are not going to be used,” Hadjar aggressively noted. “And that’s what pisses me off the most right now. I just want to be there and fight with the other guys.”
A fresh restart
Given that he is already starting at the very back of the grid, taking additional, intentional grid drops for brand-new mechanical components seems like a highly logical strategy for the Milton Keynes-based squad. When Slater suggested adding a fresh power unit to his yearly allocation pool, Hadjar fully endorsed the drastic move.
Isack Hadjar, Red Bull Racing
Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images
“Yeah, for sure. We need stuff that is new,” Hadjar confirmed. “And tomorrow is an opportunity, obviously, because everything is breaking apart this weekend. Yeah, we need a fresh restart.”
Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies has yet to formally confirm if the team will break parc fermé regulations to install a completely new power unit, but the team’s massive reliability issues will undoubtedly be the central focus of its overnight debrief.
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