Laurent Mekies was full of praise for Isack Hadjar after he qualified in the top three on his Red Bull debut, providing a high point on a tricky first weekend of the season for the team.
Although there was a sizable gap of 0.785s to polesitter George Russell, Hadjar impressed in his first Qualifying hour for the Milton Keynes-based squad, especially as his team mate Max Verstappen was knocked out in Q1 after crashing when his rear axle locked up.
Starting third behind the two Mercedes cars, Hadjar lost a couple of positions in the first stint of the race – with Mekies later confirming that the Frenchman had a battery issue – before he was forced to retire on Lap 11 as smoke billowed from his RB22.
Despite the DNF, the team boss was enthusiastic about Hadjar’s overall performance, especially given the challenges thrown up by the all-new 2026 cars and power units.
“He had a fantastic weekend,” Mekies said. “Coming here, [he had] fairly limited mileage in testing, with a bit of lack of luck there. And he came here from the very first lap in FP1 on Friday at the right pace.
“We were able to split the testing programme between the cars and get double the amount of information. He went to Qualifying with everything that [is entailed for] a first time Qualifying with these rules. Absolutely nailed it. Put the car in P3, which is probably as high as it could have been on Saturday.
“So, you know, hats off, really. And today, he was on his way to have a mega start before he realised we didn’t have the battery charge.”
With Verstappen securing P6 after charging from 20th on the grid, the 58-lap race at Albert Park gave Red Bull plenty to digest in the few days before the Chinese Grand Prix as they accept that they are at a disadvantage compared to Mercedes and Ferrari.
“In the race, it’s probably fair to say that we were at least at the pace of McLaren, but certainly not able to fight with the Ferrari or with the Mercedes,” Mekies admitted. “It’s something that we are aware of. We have the ambition and the duty to build a path to go and get these guys. It will take a bit of time, but it was not a surprise.”
Meanwhile Verstappen insisted after the race that he does not feel “concerned” about the deficit to Mercedes despite crossing the line 54.617s behind winner George Russell.
Mekies echoed the sentiment, concluding: “The dominant feeling is that we have confirmed that we are in the fight. We are very proud of everyone in the team for the work done in the last three years, for the work done coming into this season to be able to be in the fight straight away from Race 1.
“I think it’s a huge achievement. Do we have the ambition and the obligation to do better? Yes, but the starting point is that we were fighting here – P3 yesterday, P20 to P6 today.
“You have seen how things are imperfect during the race weekend. Many people complained yesterday in Qualifying that you could not optimise your lap because it’s effectively difficult session to session, run to run, to nail everything out of these rules.
“That’s a challenge that we have to embrace, and then the same in the race. There has been a lot going on, but the bottom line is we are in the fight here, we will be in the fight in the top four hopefully next week, and then after that we need to develop faster than competition.”
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