In his first Monaco Grand Prix, the French driver from Racing Bulls delivered an impeccable performance on Sunday. His 6th place finish on the streets of the Principality is a fitting reward for a promising start to the season.
It’s hard to catch up with Isack Hadjar who, once his TV obligations were fulfilled, had only one urgency: to cut through the crowd of selfie addicts, back-slapping lumberjacks, and admirers hunting for meaningful glances. The emergence of a champion. A heartthrob. The echo of his words has not yet reached the height of the sentiment. “We executed a plan and everything went well. Behind me, Liam Lawson played along to secure my 6th place. He slowed the pace to give me some comfort. And even if the race was a bit long, especially with 52 consecutive laps on hard tyres, everything went well. Plus, my teammate finished in 8th place.”
And so Hadjar is propelled into bliss. While Pierre Gasly struggles with Alpine (he retired after colliding with Yuki Tsunoda) and Esteban Ocon (an excellent 7th on Sunday) lives his adventure with Haas in relative anonymity, the position of France’s number 1 driver remains open to the most deserving. The Racing Bulls car seems “easy” to drive, at least more so than its big sister from Red Bull.
For his first Monaco Grand Prix, Hadjar adhered to the mission he had set for himself: to go instinctively from the start to gauge the limits of the track, to measure how far to take risks. The result, two safety barriers bitten on Friday, with the damage that implies. And on Saturday, a controlled qualification. This time, the young driver had taken the measure of the track and clocked the sixth fastest time. Thanks to a three-position penalty suffered by Lewis Hamilton, he started from the fifth position on the grid.
Isack Hadjar
“It’s been a great week for me. I’ve taken it one step at a time.”
“I knew I would keep my position if I didn’t make a mistake,” he commented at the finish. Easier said than done. With an aggressive strategy (pit stops on laps 14 and 20), the young Frenchman only lost one position to an even more cunning strategist, Lewis Hamilton, who started 7th and finished 5th. Hadjar could draw a more than positive balance from his first Monaco Grand Prix experience in F1: “I have only progressed. It’s been a great week for me. I’ve taken it one step at a time. I can breathe now.” And quickly run to take refuge on the Red Bull barge, protected by a few tanned apparitors with enigmatic looks. It was impossible to hold back the Parisian eel any longer.
We did find one of his close associates, who, after repeating to us that Hadjar was proud of his performance and that the plan had worked perfectly, explained that the young driver had a stomach ache. After sucking on his vitamin drink bottle all day long, one ends up being caught by little annoyances. Unless it was a breakdown from having to juggle for 78 laps in the middle of a double row of guillotine rails, with an oversized monster.
“Even if we made ten stops, it wouldn’t work”: the new rule on stops was not enough to animate the Monaco GP.
This earned the young tricolor the compliments of Laurent Mekies, chosen this weekend by Canal+ to verbalize his race plan live – a good pick – and who, once the GP was over, admitted to being blown away by the mastery “from the first to the last lap” of his driver. But, as a good team leader, Mekies associated his strategists, his mechanics, Liam Lawson, and the entire team based in Faenza, so that this performance would not be summed up to the success of a driver, no matter how promising he may be.
The laurels of glory await him. And those with whom he raced in front in Monaco have already won them. “I drove among the big heads” (Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, who had to retire), he will sigh. “Phew, it went well.” His team principal agreed: “It’s one thing to go fast, it’s another to confirm.”
Ocon, a Welcome Rebound
After a disastrous weekend in Imola, concluded by a retirement due to an engine problem, Esteban Ocon did not let doubt set in. The Frenchman from Haas had a full Monaco GP, with an 8th place on the grid that he slightly improved in the race (7th). The Haas is a car that is getting better and the Normand was able to take advantage of it on the track by teasing Isack Hadjar, whom he often had in his sights. “It was a well-constructed weekend, we did everything that was possible,” he appreciated.
If Monaco was successful for him, Ocon still had a grueling race. The reason: this succession of accordion laps that made him see all colors. “There were many different rhythms,” he detailed. “I had to push hard, then manage, see the tire degradation, and then rather secure the position.” But he managed to put all the elements end to end, a chance that Pierre Gasly did not have, trapped by an unexpected offset from Yuki Tsunoda at the exit of the turn on the 9th lap. A fatal contact for his Alpine. D. F.
