Why Hadjar was still allowed to keep his Monaco podium despite FIA investigation

It didn’t seem like it was going to be Isack Hadjar’s weekend in Monaco. Just a few hundred meters from the French border, Max Verstappen’s teammate crashed his RB22 on Friday, causing significant damage. Yet on Sunday afternoon he stood next to Prince Albert of Monaco on the podium, holding the trophy for third place.

The French driver ran a solid race, helped by the retirements of Verstappen, Charles Leclerc, and Lando Norris, while George Russell dropped back due to several time penalties. The penalty for Pierre Gasly, who crossed the line in third, was also a welcome boost for Hadjar.

For a couple of hours there was real concern over whether Hadjar could keep his third place. During the red-flag situation, Red Bull Racing worked on the young driver’s car because there had been a power unit issue throughout the race. Red Bull feared the engine wouldn’t make it to the end.

“"We battled a number of issues on this car from quite early in the race,” Laurent Mekies explained to, among others, GPblog. “As you may imagine, that has a lot of consequences on the energy management and so forth and so on. So, brake balance, he had a very, very hard time. The issues became quite big after he went through the runoff in the chicane. He managed to survive that to P3, fortunately."

Mekies then explained that during the full neutralization work was carried out on Hadjar’s car to resolve the problem. The team boss said there was “some confusion” about what was and wasn’t allowed: "We got instructed to leave the car as such. I need to go through it with the guys, but in this sort of moment, you simply follow the instruction that has been given to you by the FIA. As I say, I will need to go through the sequence, but they made it clear to us that they wanted us to leave the original components."

Afterwards, the stewards determined that work had indeed been carried out on Hadjar’s car, which is generally not allowed. There is one exception: safety. In this case, safety was at stake, so there was subsequently “a certain tolerance” for Red Bull to have worked on—specifically—the car’s power unit.

As a result, Isack Hadjar kept his third place, although Pierre Gasly still hopes to snatch it away. His team Alpine is contesting another decision by the stewards.