Hadjar encouraged by progress despite “plateau” in Qualifying as Red Bull faces overnight rebuild

Red Bull endured a tense and uneven qualifying session at their home race in Spielberg, with Max Verstappen crashing out of Q3 and Isack Hadjar securing eighth on the grid after a challenging but ultimately encouraging afternoon.

The team now faces an overnight rebuild on Verstappen’s RB22, while Hadjar believes his own performance showed the car had more potential than the final result suggests.

Verstappen’s session had already been fraught before his high‑speed crash at Turn 10. Entering qualifying with fewer fresh soft tyres than his rivals, he was forced to take risks throughout Q1 and Q2, scraping into the top ten by just 0.040s. His first Q3 lap was strong enough for fifth, but his second run ended abruptly when the rear of the RB22 snapped, sending him through the gravel and into the barriers.

Hadjar, meanwhile, approached qualifying from a different trajectory. After struggling with the car’s balance in FP2, he immediately felt more comfortable in FP3 — a shift that gave him confidence heading into the afternoon.

“In FP2, I didn’t feel happy with the set up of the car but in FP3 I did from the very first lap, so I knew it would be a better day straight away,” he explained.

“Halfway through qualifying I was on a bit of a plateau performance wise, which we corrected for that final lap, which I’m pleased with, so we did well there.”

Hadjar’s final Q3 lap was his strongest of the session, but deployment issues at key moments prevented him from fully capitalising on the RB22’s pace.

“The guys did a good job progressing and bringing upgrades this weekend and I extracted all I could from the car, but we had a few deployment issues when it mattered, so the result doesn’t show its full potential,” he said.

“I think we should’ve been higher up the grid today, but tomorrow should be interesting with strategy," concluded Hadjar.