Hadjar salvages a Singapore point after a weekend of setbacks

Hadjar needed one late pass to turn his Singapore weekend into a points finish. Starting Sunday's Grand Prix from the pit lane, he worked his way to 10th and passed Pierre Gasly on lap 58 for the final point.

The problems were apparent in the sole practice session. Hadjar complained that the Red Bull bottomed too much, particularly in braking zones, and that the throttle pedal felt slippery. He was eighth, 1.449 seconds behind pace-setter George Russell and 0.717 seconds behind Max Verstappen.

In sprint qualifying, Hadjar's only SQ3 time was deleted for a track-limits breach, leaving him ninth. The lap was already 0.892 seconds slower than Verstappen's, so the deletion cost him only one place; Verstappen had also been 0.705 seconds faster in SQ1 and 0.246 seconds faster in SQ2.

On a wet sprint, Hadjar held ninth at the start before Gasly and Oliver Bearman passed him on lap one. A power-unit failure ended his race on lap three. Hadjar said he had lacked power from the start and that the car also caught fire during its recovery.

Qualifying for the Grand Prix brought another setback: Hadjar stopped on track with what he later described as a broken fourth gear. He restarted and pitted, but his second attempt went no better and he did not go back out. Marshals called him to the weighbridge while he was dealing with the technical issues; he said that added to his frustration and that he could just as well have stayed in Paris. By Saturday's end, he had completed only five slow laps.

The recovery did not end the complaints: Hadjar again reported engine trouble after the race, with a sarcastic remark that it had become familiar. He said the pace on the soft tyre surprised him; he had expected to be trapped in a train and miss the top 10, but found more speed than he had anticipated.

He wanted to use that pace to fight for a win, but said he needed a car that worked better for him. Hadjar also shifted attention to his mechanics, saying the weekend had been harder on them and they deserved better after suffering for a single point. He said Red Bull needed to reset and understand what had happened since Malaysia before returning to Austin able to fight for podiums.