Isack Hadjar says he has been working hard to understand why he fell significantly behind his team mate at the last race.
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Red Bull introduced a major upgrade to the RB22 in Miami. Max Verstappen used it to secure a front-row qualifying position, but Hadjar looked uncomfortable in his updated car from the start and was noticeably slower than Verstappen.
Earlier in the season Hadjar had shown strong pace relative to Verstappen. He qualified ahead in Australia, helped in part by a technical issue that caused Verstappen to spin in Q1, and he was also quicker at Suzuka by 0.158 seconds. Verstappen edged him by 0.1 seconds in China. The gap in Miami, however, exceeded eight tenths — a surprising shift that prompted a detailed review at Red Bull’s factory ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix, Hadjar said.
“There was a lot of work ongoing since I arrived here to understand, go deep in the analysis, to understand why I was this far away, why on our side of the garage we had so many issues,” he explained. “Definitely we didn’t do a good job, but we’re going to certainly do a lot better this weekend.”
Hadjar’s weekend in Miami was further disrupted when his car failed a post-qualifying technical check. He was disqualified from qualifying and started the race from the pit lane. He climbed to 16th place before crashing out on lap five.
For Montreal, Hadjar said Red Bull had not introduced major changes to the car, and he expects the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve to better suit the RB22’s characteristics.
“It depends on what the other teams brought [but] we didn’t do anything for this weekend,” he said. “I expect our car to be working well in this speed range. There’s no high-speed corners, so it should definitely suit us a bit better. So I’m confident performance-wise we can replicate something close to Miami.”
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