Rookie sensation Isack Hadjar continues to impress as he recovered from two mistakes on Friday to finish a brilliant P6 for Racing Bulls in the F1 Monaco GP. It’s a career-best result.
Hadjar on recovering from practice struggles at the F1 Monaco GP
In FP2 on Friday afternoon, the Racing Bulls driver had two separate brushes with the barrier as he was fortunate to escape session-ending damage on the first one.
In FP3 Hadjar could only manage P17 as he was over 0.4s off teammate Liam Lawson who finished 7th fastest in a very crowded and close midfield.
Once qualifying came, however, the French driver was back on form. He had a tenth or two in hand on the New Zealander and qualified a superb P6, which became P5 after Lewis Hamilton’s penalty.
Hadjar explained his pride in the print media pen.
“I’m really proud because, you go into FP3, you finish P17, you go into quali, confidence is a bit ruined.
“And I’m proud that we didn’t give up and we played it smart, going step by step and disconnected the brain little by little every qualifying lap.
“We did a fantastic job.”
Hadjar details intense nature of the F1 Monaco GP weekend
Although he has previously competed here in F2 alongside a number of his current colleagues on the 2025 F1 grid, Hadjar admitted the effort he put in to turn things around in qualifying was massive.
Race day was a very different story as Liam Lawson played the perfect team game.
“Yesterday was the most intense day and most hard work I’ve had to put in since I can remember.
“And today, it was a bit easier because, I really relied on Liam.
“He followed the strategy, the plan perfectly and he offered me really early pit stops. So that was the target and that was perfectly executed.”
Hadjar on the strategy of Racing Bulls and how it played out during the F1 Monaco GP
It became very quickly that Racing Bulls were using Liam Lawson to back the rest of the field up. With the Kiwi in P9, Hadjar and the other drivers in the top 8 soon held a massive advantage over the rest of the field.
Such was the extent as to which Lawson backed Albon and co. up, Hadjar had completed his two mandated stops by lap 19. From there it was about managing the gap to Fernando Alonso who tried to extend his middle stint and overcut. However, the Spaniard’s engine gave up just before the halfway point.
While Ocon and Lawson finished right behind him, only an unforced error would have stopped him getting P6.
“I think the key was just to keep it productive and keep the talking with my engineer to know what was going on [behind me].
“I was aware of Liam’s pace, we were keeping an eye on Fernando. We knew what was going on, I was ready to box at any time.
“It was quite easy and I had fun.”
A very boring F1 Monaco GP
Hadjar had to do almost 60 laps on the hard tyre following those two early stops.
He admitted that it was so dull behind the wheel and that he was not far off sleeping.
“Yeah, the problem is you’re nearly falling asleep because you’re doing tyre management and it’s becoming really boring. And actually sometimes I was picking up the pace because I was so bored but I had to keep thinking.
“So no, it was a long wait to the end.”
Isack Hadjar never thought about an even better result at the F1 Monaco GP
Asked if he felt a potential top 5 result could have been on if a Safety Car had appeared after he made his two mandatory stops inside the first 20 laps, the Racing Bulls driver said the quality of the field is too high now to even imagine such a scenario.
“Honestly, I didn’t expect a Safety Car because the level of the field is really high so I knew nothing was going to happen.
“So I was confident the position was secured and I had to go until the end on these tyres which was a bit painful.”
The result moved Hadjar into P10 in the F2 Drivers’ Championship on 15 points, with Racing Bulls moving up to 7th on the Constructors’ side.
