Isack Hadjar explains how he went from “flying” to hitting the wall in Miami GP

Isack Hadjar felt he was “flying” during the opening laps of the Miami Grand Prix and that speed lured him into losing focus and crashing out early on.

The Red Bull driver was forced to start from the pitlane after being kicked out of qualifying for his car floorboards being too big, a mistake the team owned up to and apologised to the French driver before the race.

Hadjar made swift progress up the order and has just overtaken Arvid Lindblad for 15th on lap five when he clipped the inside wall at Turn 14, which broke his front-left suspension and sent him into the wall at Turn 15.

His rapid progress and eagerness to help make amends meant he lost full concentration in the twisty middle sector which led to his crash.

“The whole weekend I was very close and under control, but yeah, I made a mistake,” Hadjar said. “I felt honestly awesome on those first few laps. It was very easy for me to overtake. Lindblad was the last car I overtook. I was flying from the pits within just three laps of racing, so I think we had a very good pace. So to me it was feeling fine.

“It was a tough one. Just like breaking the car is pissing me off a lot. And also, it was a disappoint considering the car I had. So I just threw it all away.

“I can’t really remember [the crash] because it went by very quickly. It just felt like a big hit and I didn’t see it coming. And the car was broken. I went to the other wall and couldn’t stop it.

“It just shows how much you need to be focused and I wasn’t.”

Hadjar didn’t leave any blame on his team for the qualifying exclusion which started his demise but accepted it was a nightmare Miami GP for both team and driver.

“Both the team and I made mistakes this weekend. It’s been a bit of a disaster from both our sides,” he said. “We need to stick together and see what we can do the next weekend.

“We’re happy there’s more performance in the car. It’s not such a pain now to make it to Q3, which was the first few rounds. Let’s just look at the positives and we come back in Canada and hopefully we do a strong one.”

Having seen team-mate Max Verstappen recover from a first-lap spin to take fifth place (subject to a post-race stewards investigation), Hadjar was desperate to know where his true pace would’ve seen him finish in the Miami GP having made such a strong start.

“Honestly I’m itching to get back to it like right now,” he said. “I wish I was driving. I wish I knew what I could have done. It was a good start, so having to wait three weeks [until the Canadian GP] is a bit rough.”

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– The Motorsport.com Team

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