Isack Hadjar has been disqualified from Qualifying at the 2026 F1 Miami GP following a floor legality breach. The issue was referred to the stewards after post-Qualifying technical checks that were conducted before the matter was escalated for further review.
The Frenchman qualified P9 on Saturday afternoon after finishing 9th in the Sprint Race earlier in the day. While he was happier with his performance today, Max Verstappen delivered an impressive lap in qualifying to secure a front-row start in P2 for the main race.
Decision made ahead of Grand Prix start
Due to the looming possibility of wet weather, the FIA, F1 and Miami GP organisers announced a revised start time for the 2026 F1 Miami GP, with the race set to start at 13:00 local time instead.
After the qualifying session, officials found that the floor of Hadjar’s car had protruded 2mm too far on both the left and right-hand side. They subsequently summouned the Red Bull driver and team representatives to see the stewards at 07:00am local time ahead of the race start.
With technical infringements like these, it became increasingly clear that a disqualification from the session was likely for Hadjar.
Hadjar reflects on “big progress” made from Friday
Reflecting on his qualifying, Hadjar said: “Yes, a lot better. I just couldn’t tidy up. The car was very hard to drive, it was very fast. Then in Q3, I just couldn’t put it all together and on the other side, well, we have no straight line speed.”
“No, just myself, just driving.”, Hadjar said about himself critically. Although pleased with the progress he made since Friday, where he had been more than a second off Verstappen, the Frenchman explained that he was unable to put together a clean lap that could have placed him further up the grid.
“I think it’s a very tricky track, very low grip with high track temperature. So nothing to do with what we had in the first three rounds. It’s not a very flowy racing track with good grip. It’s completely different and Max [Verstappen] is very, very good at adapting to these conditions.”
“And in the corners I can tell you I’ve made big, big progress compared to yesterday. Just, I couldn’t tidy up like he did and on top of that I’m missing in every straight.”
Struggling with the drivability of RB22
Speaking about the challenges of the Miami International Autodrome, Hadjar shared that he continues to struggle with the drivability and handling of the RB22.
“On my side, I couldn’t take Turn 1 and once you miss Turn 1, it’s Turn 2 and 3 that are also compromised as well. On my side it started there, and then you heat up the tyres more, and then you pay the price for the rest of the lap. And on top of that, I’m struggling with drivability as well and top speed.”
Bouncing back from the disappointments he faced on Friday, he expressed satisfaction in being able to close the performance gap and credited Verstappen for his performance.
“Very happy. Yesterday I knew I had to dig deep.”, Hadjar said.
“Half of the lap time yesterday was on something I couldn’t control and half was myself. So I knew I had to really deliver something more and today when I look at the data I’m happy with what I was able to do.”
“Max was way better than me at putting everything together and on top of that a bit more training. He did a very, very amazing job.”
Laurent Mekies
“We made a mistake and we respect the decision of the Stewards. No performance advantage was intended nor gained from this error. We will learn from this incident and assess our processes to understand how it occurred and to take steps to ensure it cannot happen again. As a team, we apologise to Isack, and to our fans and partners. We learn the hard way today but we will move forward. Now our focus is on converting yesterday’s encouraging showing into a strong race performance this afternoon.”
