Hadjar weighs up Red Bull’s chances against ‘stronger’ Ferrari at Hungarian Grand Prix

Isack Hadjar has admitted that Red Bull have plenty of catching up to do in order to challenge Ferrari at the Hungarian Grand Prix, with the Frenchman lamenting how his day “got worse” as it went on.

It was far from an easy start to the weekend as many of the drivers struggled with the dusty conditions at the Hungaroring, but Hadjar nevertheless got off to a strong start by setting the fourth fastest time in FP1, albeit 0.922s off Charles Leclerc’s benchmark.

Although the wind picked up to make balance more difficult in the second hour of practice, the Ferrari man and his team mate Lewis Hamilton found further improvements while Hadjar dropped back to P6, leaving him frustrated by the increased gap to their rivals.

“Very tricky FP2,” he concluded. “I thought FP1 was tough enough – it got worse in FP2 [with the] wind. It’s hard to get a proper read with the changes we made.

“As soon as I’m in the car, it’s working okay. It’s just that the Ferraris are always stronger. We’ve got to find quite a bit of lap time tonight. Our long run seemed pretty good, but that one-lap pace is lacking.”

Elaborating on how big a concern the Scuderia’s early performance was, Hadjar said: “I knew they were going to be quick on a track like that. At the moment, I think we’re waiting for Mercedes to wake up. Like always, I think it’s going to be very close with the McLarens so that’s where we are at the moment.”

The 21-year-old executed a remarkable recovery drive last time out at the Belgian Grand Prix, where a substantial grid penalty saw him start from P21 before he charged through the field to cross the line in sixth place.

His team mate Max Verstappen finished on the podium in the same race, but any momentum at Red Bull has been knocked back by the Hungaroring’s vastly different characteristics, with Technical Director Pierre Wache explaining that they have “a lot of work to do”.

“We’re not where we should be or where we want to be,” he said. “Our drivers are not happy with the car balance. Clearly the grip at this track is very low on Friday. The bumps of the track are also perturbing the car balance.

“We expected that [Ferrari] would be the quickest in some corners here and that they’d have an advantage mainly on one-lap performance, I would say. We’ll see what they have on the long run, but they have the car to beat here.”