Mekies admits Hadjar's car was not right at Sepang as Red Bull investigate lost podium
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Red Bull face an anxious wait to discover the reason for Isack Hadjar's sudden drop in performance in last weekend's Bahrain GP in Malaysia with boss Laurent Mekies still clueless as to what caused him to drop from the podium places. With just days to the Singapore GP, time is running out to find out the cause of the problem.
Mekies has since admitted that something was wrong with Isack Hadjar's car in the closing laps of the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia. Red Bull is now going through its chassis and engine data to find out why.
The team boss said “not everything went well with his car”. That is a different picture from the one Hadjar gave after the race, when he insisted the power unit was fine.
Max Verstappen's win at Sepang was Red Bull's first since the team started building its own power units with Ford. It looked for much of the race like Red Bull could take a second double podium in a row. Hadjar had fought his way back into contention from eighth on the grid, but a battery issue limited him to fifth.
Mekies made it clear that the result hurt on Hadjar's side of the garage.
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There are naturally mixed feelings on the other side of the garage because Isack also showed very strong pace all weekend. We could have rounded off this weekend with another double podium; unfortunately, not everything went well with his car.- Laurent Mekies,
Red Bull still has no answer
Mekies has since confirmed that Red Bull does not yet know what caused the drop in performance after the final Safety Car, which cost Hadjar third place.
In the race he was just as strong; he really did everything right. Did we lose some speed at the restart after the last safety car? Yes. Do we already have an exact answer to how exactly that happened? No, not yet. The guys are analysing the data from the chassis and the engine to understand why we did not have the speed needed to hold on to third place.- Laurent Mekies,
He added that the loss was all the more painful because Hadjar had been keeping Lewis Hamilton behind him comfortably in the laps before the restart.
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I am sure that, as always, we will do a thorough analysis to understand where we fell short and what exactly happened that made us lose so much performance in the last few laps.- Laurent Mekies,
Driver and team tell different stories
Hadjar's version of events blamed the battery state at the restart and cleared the power unit. However, Mekies only referred to the problem indirectly and that there was still no clear explanation for Hadjar's lack of pace.
Mekies did offer one more clues, pointing to Hadjar's trip off the track on the way to the grid.
The only slight annoyance is that we had to relinquish Isack Hadjar's third place towards the end of the race. Isack was right at the start, on his way to the grid alongside the track, and it seems the underbody was damaged in the process.- Laurent Mekies,
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That would point to a physical problem with the car rather than an energy problem alone. Red Bull has not yet said whether floor damage explains the grip Hadjar was missing, or what it means for the battery issue he reported.
Questions to answer in Singapore
The next round is the Singapore Grand Prix this week, so Red Bull has only a few days to find its answers. Three questions are still open: why the battery was low at the final restart, whether the underbody damage cost Hadjar grip, and how the two are connected.
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