Red Bull driver Isack Hadjar has openly described his Formula 1 United States Grand Prix weekend as a disaster, despite brilliantly securing third place on the grid for Sunday's main race at the Circuit of the Americas.
The Milton Keynes-based outfit arrived at COTA riding a wave of immense momentum following a dominant brace of victories in Malaysia and Singapore courtesy of Max Verstappen, alongside a strong 2-3 finish in Azerbaijan.
That remarkable pace clearly translated into the COTA weekend, with Verstappen locking out the front row in second place while Hadjar slotted in right behind him in third. Yet, the French driver's journey to the second row was fraught with significant challenges.
Throughout the early practice sessions, Hadjar struggled immensely with track limits violations, which consistently put him on the back foot and forced him to constantly chase lap time validity heading into the knockout qualifying format.
"I mean, it's been a disaster of a weekend for me," he admitted, highlighting the frustration of having his laps repeatedly deleted by race control while struggling to complete a single clean run on the soft compound tires during practice.
Despite the early setbacks, the technical crew worked tirelessly on the car's setup overnight. Their aggressive experimentation ultimately paid off when the session mattered most, allowing the machinery to truly come alive under his control.
"We really dug deep on the set-up. We tried so many things this weekend, and it really paid off," he stated, expressing satisfaction with the engineering turnaround, though he remained slightly disappointed with minor execution errors during his initial Q3 flying lap.
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