Isack Hadjar opened up about his recent injury. The Frenchman explained how it happened, and how he felt afterwards. Hadjar injured his wrist during the summer break, ahead of the weekend in Zandvoort. The Frenchman was forced to skip the race weekends in the Netherlands, Monza and Madrid, with Liam Lawson replacing him, before he was able to return at the Baku City Circuit.
Speaking on the Beyond the Grid podcast, the
Red Bull Racing driver said:
"Yeah. It's very stupid. It's just like I finished a gym session, conditioning on the bag, and it's just like very bad hit. I was not strapped. Yeah. It was a s*** bag, I must say."At first, Hadjar did not know that the incident would have such a big consequence. "The next day when I woke up, never in my mind I thought it would be a fracture because I felt limited and I had pain, but I never broke anything in my whole life. So when he told me, I'm out for this amount of weeks, I was like, 'yeah. I have a race in five days.' So what do we do now? So, yeah, it was big shock," he explained.
Hadjar first contact his trainer, and then Red Bull's physio, but he was not the one to break the news to team boss Laurent Mekies.
"I think someone else did it for me. I think I kept it a secret, like, for a day to plan what I wanted to do with my wrist, and then we broke the news. But, yeah, for a day, I was like a lot of thoughts was going on."
Hadjar finished on the podium at the first race after his return in Baku - Photo: Race Pictures
Hadjar wanted to return in Monza
Hadjar said he aimed to return for the Italian Grand Prix, but after that was not possible, his new objective became Baku.
"If you want it brand new, it's twelve weeks. I don't have twelve weeks. For me, Monza was, like, ideal to come back. It was not working. I had no strength, nothing. No mobility. And then I yeah. Then if you're out for Monza, that means you're out for Madrid as well. So, yeah, my target was always Baku. So, you know, I think I've done well with the healing and, yeah, it's good to be back."
Hadjar's Baku return was a successful one. The Frenchman scored his second podium of the season, finishing behind George Russell and Max Verstappen.