Mekies protects Hadjar: “It wasn’t his fault he was so far behind”

The ‘mea culpa’ of the Red Bull team principal Red Bull raised its head again in Miami, even if the spoils were not so rich (14 points, all collected by Max Verstappen). The updated RB22 allowed the Dutchman to conquer the front row in qualifying, a significant leap forward considering the fact that in Japan the four-time world champion was unable to access Q3 unlike his teammate Isack Hadjar. Hadjar, however, ran into a bad weekend in Florida which ended badly after just a few laps. The French driver should have started on the fifth row, but was disqualified because his Red Bull had an irregularity on the floor. The gap to Verstappen for Hadjar in qualifying was heavy, almost a second, but Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies explained that the gap was not entirely attributable to the driving: “Hadjar in qualifying had a performance deficit on the straight compared to Verstappen which was our fault, I won’t go into details – said Mekies as reported by L’Equipe – just after the accident in the race I went to tell him that it wasn’t his fault if he found himself at the back of the grid after qualifying. I would define his weekend in Miami as worrying, in fact, I think he would have shown himself to be quite strong in the race because his lap times were very fast.”

Automobile Magazine – F1 English News
2026-05-07 15:30:00