‘This one really hurts’ – Hadjar laments ‘very silly mistake’ in Miami GP crash

Isack Hadjar had high hopes of a charge from the pit lane to the points at the Miami Grand Prix, but his early improvement was dramatically cut short as he drove into the wall on Lap 6, resulting in the deployment of the Safety Car.

The 21-year-old endured a weekend to forget, starting with an underwhelming Sprint that saw him maintain his starting position of P9 to finish just outside of the points while his team mate Max Verstappen crossed the line in fifth.

Things went from bad to worse as, despite ending Qualifying in P9 once again, Hadjar was later disqualified from the session due to a technical infringement – Team Principal Laurent Mekies apologised for the mistake after learning that his driver would have to start the race from the pit lane.

Hadjar, determined to bounce back, gained a handful of positions on the first few laps and looked quietly confident before he clipped the kerb and broke his front suspension, crashing into the wall at Turn 13.

“This one really hurts because I had such good pace,” he said after his DNF. “It felt very easy overtaking.

“Honestly, I'd like to just look back at what happened but it went by so quickly that I was already in the wall. Very disappointed to throw away points and also hurt the car.”

He was seen hitting the steering wheel in frustration while Pierre Gasly and Liam Lawson tangled shortly afterwards further around the circuit, triggering a Safety Car period to recover their respective stranded cars.

Red Bull were one of several teams to introduce a major upgrade package in Miami, making Hadjar’s incident even more disheartening as they seemed to take a step forward in performance, with Verstappen taking P5 in the Grand Prix.

Asked about his challenging weekend, Hadjar summarised: “I really wanted to leave the weekend with knowing, okay we've made some good progress and today I could give a very strong result to the team coming from the pit lane.

“To know that I just threw that all away because of a very silly mistake is just so frustrating.”