Isack Hadjar has admitted that he felt the “consistency was nowhere” in his first sessions as a Red Bull driver, but insisted that the issues he faced were expected and should not affect his performance in the Australian Grand Prix.
The 21-year-old hit the ground running in FP1, briefly holding the top spot on his debut for the Milton Keynes outfit before he suffered a “big lock-up” that saw him take to the grass, ultimately ending the hour in fourth place behind team mate Max Verstappen.
Another moment in FP2 – this time a massive snap at Turn 5 – saw Hadjar narrowly avoid the wall and he wound up as the only driver from the expected top four teams to place outside of the top eight, taking P9 on the timesheets.
“In FP1 everything went pretty well, and then FP2 I just had a few issues with the car,” he said after the session. “So yeah, consistency was nowhere really, and I’ve been struggling a bit more with the car balance. We made a few changes so let’s see what we understood.”
Prompted on what the biggest issue he endured was, Hadjar explained: “Inconsistency in the deployment – I had to adapt my braking points and it was just very messy.
“For sure it was expected. As long as we know why and we don’t make the same mistake again, then we’ll be fine.”
With multiple teams seemingly in the fight for pole position, the adjustments they make overnight to optimise their one-lap pace for Qualifying will be crucial in influencing the final order – something which Chief Engineer Paul Monaghan is acutely aware of.
“We’ve seen how easy it is to get it wrong; we’ve seen how difficult it is to get it to be perfect,” Monaghan said. “We’ve got to take those lessons into tomorrow and make sure we’re ready for Qualifying and the race. Every time you run it, there’s a new way to get it wrong.
“It’s not in our control what the others do. All we can do is get the best out of our car tomorrow and see where we end up. If we do a better job than the others, we should be competitive.
“If we’re ill-prepared relative to our opposition, we won’t be looking quite so good. I don’t know that it matters what our opposition does – it’s more sensitive to what we do tomorrow, and that’s how I see it.”
