‘We need to get it sorted’ – Hadjar suggests Red Bull ‘feels like the usual’ after upgrades in Austria

Isack Hadjar was left to rue some struggles for Red Bull on the opening day of track action at the Austrian Grand Prix, with the Frenchman stating that the car “feels like the usual” after a raft of updates were added for the event.

It was confirmed earlier on Friday that the Milton Keynes-based outfit would be running a number of upgrades for their home weekend, including changes to the floor and rear suspension.

However, it was not an entirely smooth day for the squad during the two practice hours, with Max Verstappen stopping in the pit lane early on in Free Practice 1 as well as experiencing a problem with his seat when second practice took place. The Dutchman ended both sessions in P4 on the timesheets.

Hadjar, meanwhile, was also late to hit the track in FP1 due to car issues and recorded just 11 laps in P12. While he improved to P7 during FP2 – and completed a healthier 28 tours – the 21-year-old suggested after the session that the team have improvements to make.

Asked if he had been able to get a read on the updates, Hadjar answered: “No, it’s not a completely different car, to be honest. It feels like the usual, to be fair. We still have work to do to catch up.

“For some reason, we know in Free Practice we were quite slow to get started and the car comes alive sometimes in Qualifying, but we need to get it sorted because it’s quite tough.”

Both Hadjar and Verstappen reported problems at Turn 3, on which Hadjar commented: “It’s just no grip. We are struggling with grip, which is surprising. It’s a speed range we’ve been good at, so to have this behaviour from the car, I don’t understand.”

Looking ahead to Saturday, the French racer was also quizzed on whether – after doing work overnight – the squad will only fully know where they stand when they get to Q1 of Qualifying.

“Yeah, but we want to make the car work in every session,” he explained. “We don’t want luck to be helping us – we want to do the job ourselves and, whatever the track gives you, you need to be fast.”

Red Bull Technical Director Pierre Wache also acknowledged that the team had faced a tricky start to their running on Friday, but went on to voice his belief that the “potential is there”.

“We had some issues in the garage on both cars starting in FP1,” he said. “It was quite difficult – after all, it is what you expect when you change so much [on] the car. We tried to recover. FP1 was a little bit limited in what we could do, especially on Isack’s car – he didn’t run a lot.

“We tried to understand the car, tried to understand the new package to see how it is. We modified some stuff on set-up for FP2 – maybe some were in the right direction, some not, then we tried to analyse that after FP2.

“Clearly we have some work to do – when you change a lot [on] the car like that, there is a lot to learn, but the potential is there I think, and we have a good path to Quali I hope.”

Wache went on to admit that it is “difficult to say” how long it will take the squad to understand if either some or all of their new upgrade package has worked, but the Frenchman added: “As a full package, it looks [like it is] delivering what we expect.

“You don’t know – you know only your absolute performance, you don’t know relative to the others. The conditions are difficult also – this track is quite difficult. But it’s there, and we are quite happy with what we have.”

In terms of whether Red Bull can get themselves into the fight with Mercedes and Ferrari during the weekend, Wache responded: “I don’t know. I think the long run was quite promising, compared to what we had in Barcelona. Clearly in short run we still have to improve, and I hope we can be closer.”

He also praised Hadjar for how he has been “adapting himself to the car” – despite his tricky start to the day – as well as stating that Verstappen is “focused on what we can improve”, with one of these areas being that “we have to fix some parts of the balance”.