Isack Hadjar says he is enjoying having a \u201cvery good\u201d car beneath him upon his return from injury, having been third fastest in Qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.<\/p>\n
The event in Sepang is just the Frenchman\u2019s second since missing three rounds due to a wrist injury suffered whilst training<\/a> in the summer break.<\/p>\n Last time out in Baku the Red Bull<\/a> driver celebrated a third place podium finish<\/a>, and despite being third quickest in Qualifying in Malaysia, he will start the race from P8 following a grid penalty<\/a> for taking a seventh internal combustion engine (ICE) \u2013 with only four permitted.<\/p>\n “It\u2019s a bit unfortunate we take the penalty on the track where we’re that fast,” he said. “But from eighth, hopefully we can go through the field and come back for a good result.\u201d<\/p>\n Hadjar<\/a> has been closer to the pace of Red Bull team mate Max Verstappen<\/a>, who starts on pole for the first time in 2026, but was disappointed he couldn\u2019t lock out the front row.<\/p>\n \u201cI was quite happy up until that very last lap, and then it\u2019s like we had a downgrade on that final lap in all aspects,” he explained.<\/p>\n “On the tyres, the grip I felt, we were down on power, so nothing really aligned when I felt like an easy P2 was achievable.<\/p>\n “You know, it\u2019s the first time in my life that I actually feel like we do a terrible job and we\u2019re third, so that\u2019s the perks of having a very good car, and I won\u2019t lie, it\u2019s very satisfying.\u201d<\/p>\n With his team mate Verstappen up front, does Hadjar think he can fight back from eighth for a podium?<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to be so difficult to overtake on just raw pace and having to go for it on a track like that, all the temperatures are through the roof, and following cars is going to be difficult.<\/p>\n “So I think the only way is just, you know, be smart with the strategy, as clean as we can, and just go for it. It\u2019s going to be fun.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Isack Hadjar says he is enjoying having a \u201cvery good\u201d car beneath him upon his return from injury,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":918998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-918997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}