Hadjar furious – but not at Lindblad: ‘I was just powerless’

Isack Hadjar didn’t hold back over team radio at Suzuka – but when the dust settled, the Frenchman made it clear that his anger toward Arvid Lindblad barely scratched the surface of a race he described as fundamentally broken.

In fact, the fireworks between the two young Red Bull prospects were little more than background noise compared to a deeper, more crippling issue: a car that simply gave up on him.

From the outside, Hadjar’s Japanese Grand Prix looked like a simmering feud. After starting eighth, he was quickly shuffled back – losing out to Lindblad, then to Max Verstappen and Esteban Ocon in the opening laps.

What followed was a tense, drawn-out battle with Lindblad, complete with aggressive defending and a warning flag shown to the latter for moving under braking. Hadjar’s irritation spilled onto the radio in real time.

But afterward, he brushed it off almost dismissively.

“This is not even one per cent of how bad this race was,” he said. “It's no big deal. We just need to understand why that battery situation [was happening], and so early.”

For Hadjar, the real story wasn’t the driver ahead – it was the sudden disappearance of performance beneath him.

‘You’re just powerless’

Before everything unraveled, Hadjar believed he was exactly where he needed to be. Battling in eighth, with Pierre Gasly within reach, the race was unfolding to plan – until it wasn’t.

“Because I was comfortable in eighth, the plan was to fight Pierre [Gasly], which we were doing. And it all faded away with an empty battery, and then you’re just powerless.”

The word “powerless” wasn’t metaphorical. With battery deployment issues striking early, Hadjar’s RB22 effectively became a sitting duck – stripped of the electrical boost that defines modern Formula 1 performance.

By the time he recovered, the race – and any chance of points – had already slipped away.

Pressed further on his clash with Lindblad, Hadjar offered a more measured take – one that hinted at the internal politics of Red Bull’s young driver pipeline.

“You can understand. He lets Max through, he defends against me. So it just makes sense for him, you know? But yeah, that was not very useful for both of us. It's okay. He's young,” he explained.

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It was a subtle jab wrapped in reluctant acceptance. The implication was clear: Lindblad knew exactly who he was racing – and who he wasn’t.

Still, Hadjar refused to dwell on it. Not when the bigger picture looked so bleak.

Speed without substance

Despite Suzuka marking the first race of the season where both Red Bulls saw the chequered flag, Hadjar found little comfort in the statistic.

"The only positive right now is that I can drive the car fast – but we have no lead on how we can make the fast now,” he said.

“We have a good power unit, the engine is good, everything. It's just the chassis side is terrible. Just slow in the corners.”

It’s a damning assessment – one that cuts deeper than any on-track spat.

Hadjar may have shown flashes of pace, and even glimpses of composure after a heated battle, but his verdict on the RB package was unequivocal: speed exists, but only in theory.

At Suzuka, the real fight wasn’t with Lindblad. It was with a car that, at the worst possible moment, simply stopped fighting back.

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