Hadjar labels Red Bull 'undriveable' after Austin set-up gamble backfires

Hadjar's Austin nightmare: 'The car was completely gone for me'

Isack Hadjar branded his Red Bull “undriveable” and his second practice session at the United States Grand Prix “a disaster” after set-up changes between runs left him desperately short of grip around the Circuit of the Americas.

The Frenchman ended FP2 in ninth place — a hefty 0.931 seconds behind team-mate Max Verstappen, who slotted into third behind Charles Leclerc and Kimi Antonelli — and conceded he could not put a representative lap together on the soft tyre.

Hadjar explained that the trouble set in after adjustments were made to his RB22 between sessions, with the front tyres overheating through the high-speed opening sector and leaving him with no bite for the remainder of the lap.

“We had an okay FP1, and then in FP2 I felt okay as well on the medium, even though we changed the car,” Hadjar said. “And the soft, honestly, the car was completely gone for me. So yeah, very difficult to drive. I need to turn things around tomorrow, sit down and see what we can do, because the car made a massive step down. We need to bring it back at least to the level it was this morning.”

The 0.9s deficit told its own story: Hadjar was actually slower on his soft rubber than he had been on the medium.

“It's just a disaster. After Sector 1, basically, where I made most of my lap time, from Sector 1 to the end of the lap, I was slower than on the medium,” he added. “It was just undriveable, and I was losing the front end massively. So we need to have a look, because that's not normal, why there's so much deg on one lap.”

Verstappen, by contrast, did not suffer the same fate after a power steering change following an issue in FP1. Hadjar confirmed there were some set-up differences across the garage but hoped overnight tweaks would bring him back into the fight.

“Yeah, if they managed to do it on the other side [of the garage], it's like the temperatures are going sky high, and we're going at the same speed,” the Frenchman said. “So we need to tweak something on the car balance, because we're running different stuff. You need to try. But to have such a bad feeling, I'm a bit surprised, to be honest.”

Wache: 'An overall set-up direction that we have to undo'

Red Bull Technical Director Pierre Wache conceded the team had moved in the wrong direction with Hadjar's machinery, while stressing that the baseline was not dramatically different from Verstappen's.

“Well, I think it's an overall set-up direction that we have to undo, between P1 and P2, and it's what we are working on this evening,” Wache said. “They are not far away. With this type of layout, you have the full high-speed corner during the Sector 1, after Turn 1, and I think if you overcook the tyre there, after it's more or less finished for the lap.”

Wache also pointed to the bumps that define the Austin venue as a particular headache for the RB22, suggesting the car's relative stiffness is hurting compliance.

“As expected it's jumping a lot,” he said. “The problem with this type of setup we are using, that is quite not as stiff as last year but not so far, is that the car is not very compliant on these bumps here.”

Wache closed by pinpointing where the priority lies overnight: “It's clearly the low speed performance where we are focused on at the moment – low speed is the key for us.”

The struggles arrive despite Hadjar having downplayed Red Bull's standing in the pecking order ahead of the weekend in coverage dated October 23, when he argued the RB21 was not the fastest package on the grid and that Verstappen's recent wins had come from execution rather than outright pace. Austin, on Friday's evidence, has exposed the fragility of that fine margin.

With qualifying beckoning on Saturday, Hadjar's task is clear: recover the feel that deserted him after the set-up switch and haul his RB22 back towards Verstappen's level.