Hadjar says throttle-map problem cost him a second per lap in Austin

Isack Hadjar said a throttle map that remained on the pit-lane setting cost him a second per lap in Austin. After the race, he criticised what he called an FIA rule.

Starting third, Hadjar had hoped to turn his grid position into a podium. He told Sky Sports that he had completed the start procedure correctly, but the clutch then began delivering too much. A poor radio connection meant, he said, that he could not hear what was happening.

When he came back out of the pit lane, Hadjar said, the throttle map was still set for pit-lane use. “I was stuck in that mapping,” he told Viaplay. He called driving with that setting “impossible” and described it as another FIA rule.

Hadjar was also surprised to find himself on hard tyres, saying he had expected a different plan and had not known about the change. He said he understood the team’s decision, pointing to Lando Norris, who Hadjar said had also used the hards and gone well. Hadjar described his own pace on the hard tyres as pretty good and called them the least of his problems: a different compound, he said, would not have changed the car’s drivability.