How Red Bull helped Hadjar 'keep the car alive' to claim Monaco podium

For Isack Hadjar the Monaco GP was a weekend of extremes. It began in the worst possible way when the Red Bull driver had a heavy crash in FP1, costing him valuable track time and denting his confidence.

The team did an impressive job to get him back out on track in FP2, and into Saturday he had FP3 to gradually rebuild that confidence before Qualifying.

He was as high as P3 in Q2, before taking a still respectable P5 on the final grid.

From there a podium was always possible if there was trouble ahead and that’s exactly how it played out as his own team mate Max Verstappen retired at the start and then Charles Leclerc crashed out in the late stages, opening the door to third place.

However, it was a far from straightforward afternoon for Hadjar, who not only had to fight power unit issues but also had George Russell breathing down his neck for much of the afternoon. This was a result that he really had to earn.

“Obviously he got a big setback in FP1 when he crashed the car,” said Red Bull Team Principal Laurent Mekies. “The team did a fantastic job to manage to put his car back into one piece, and to give him some FP2 time.

“Honestly, he paid us back in the way he has managed to reset, in the way he has managed to find his confidence back – not straight away in FP2, but through FP3, and ultimately to produce a very strong qualifying performance. And today it was not trouble free either.

“We battled a number of issues on his car from quite early in the race. We had a lot less engine power, and as you may imagine that has a lot of consequences on the energy management, and so forth. So he had a very, very hard time.”

Hadjar always wears his heart on his sleeve, and at times he became quite emotional on the radio as he sought help with the issues he was facing.

Mekies says the Frenchman did well to cope with the requests that were thrown at him, while navigating his way around the twisty streets of Monte Carlo.

“It's always very difficult for the driver in the car to understand what's going on when you have an issue,” he said. “And in that case he could not know exactly how much engine power he was losing.

"The implication of that loss of ICE power on the rest of the management is massive for the way these PUs are working, and from his standpoint, at that stage, he probably feels like, what's going on?

“So we understand the emotions. I think he has managed to keep the car alive. The team has managed to communicate back to him a number of changes to keep the car alive. As you can see, it's not a pleasant thing to do around here, keep changing switches to keep your car alive – but nonetheless it worked.”

Hadjar survived the restart and hectic last few laps after the red flag to finish P4 on the road, knowing that Pierre Gasly would be penalised and promote him a spot.

However it wasn’t quite over as the FIA conducted an investigation into work done on his PU during the break – later revealed to be an aborted attempt to change plugs/coils.

“As for the red flag, there was a fair amount of confusion there,” said Mekies. “But we were trying to rectify the issue, and we got instructed to leave the car as such, which we did. We attempted to rectify the issue, and we have been asked to leave the car in the original spec.”

The fact that the car was unchanged for the resumption was enough to convince the stewards to take no action – thus confirming the best result of Hadjar’s 2026 season to date.