Isack Hadjar has said he feared for his future at Red Bull after his crash during the winter test in Barcelona. The French-Algerian driver is making his debut this year with the Austrian outfit, which is known for quickly swapping drivers if they don’t deliver. Hadjar admits he briefly thought his season at Red Bull was already over before it had even begun.
During the shakedown at the Catalunya circuit last January Hadjar ended up in the barriers because of the wet conditions. For the driver the incident felt like a poor start to the upcoming season. “When I had the crash, I immediately thought of Pierre Gasly,” Hadjar told media in Bahrain. “I went on social media and thought, ‘This is it, my whole season is over.’ In the end, that actually helped me process it,” the driver said.
Not the first time
That Hadjar compares himself to Gasly is understandable. The Alpine driver crashed twice during the 2019 winter test in a Red Bull and ultimately lasted only nine races with the team. It wasn’t just Hadjar who saw the similarities — the fans did too.
Red Bull reacted strikingly differently this time. Under team principal Laurent Mekies the emphasis was squarely on the positive aspects of Hadjar’s performance in the RB22 that day. That suggests the outfit is charting a different course than in recent years when Helmut Marko was an adviser. The former top adviser was known for sidelining drivers who didn’t measure up.
Mature reaction
It wasn’t the first time Hadjar had erred in tricky conditions. Last year he crashed on his Formula 1 debut at the Australian Grand Prix. It happened on the formation lap on a wet circuit. The day ended in tears for Hadjar, and he was comforted by Lewis Hamilton‘s father, Anthony Hamilton.
That the 21-year-old is already so open about his emotions underlines his maturity. Hadjar hopes to develop further this season and wants to be the first of Verstappen’s team-mates at the team to also achieve success. During the Bahrain test he completed 86 laps on Thursday and posted the fifth-fastest time. His quickest lap was roughly two seconds slower than Verstappen’s — both drivers were likely running different programmes.
