Isack Hadjar reveals Red Bull 'suffering' due to 'on-the-edge' package

Isack Hadjar believes Red Bull is currently 'suffering' with a car package it is finding difficult to understand and has been made more complex by two very different circuits to start the new F1 season.

Hadjar opened his account as a Red Bull driver with a superb third place in qualifying for last weekend's Australian Grand Prix, which was a boost for the team after four-time F1 champion Max Verstappen had crashed in Q1.

Hadjar, though, was unable to assess the full race pace of his RB22 as he retired with a power unit problem after just 10 laps at Melbourne's Albert Park.

One week later, the car has proven to be a very different animal for both the French-Algerian driver and Verstappen, who line up ninth and eighth on the grid respectively at the Shanghai International Circuit, both around a second behind pole-sitter Kimi Antonelli.

Whilst the two results on paper, from one week to the next, may look different, Hadjar insists that it is far from the case.

"No, it's not different," he said, speaking to the media, including RacingNews365.

"We were eight-tenths off in Melbourne, on a smaller track. Here, it [the circuit] is bigger, which exposes us more, so the lap-time loss is bigger, and we have the same performance.

"We are on the edge of what we have as a package, so we suffer for now, but then we're going to make progress through the season."

Hadjar agreed with Verstappen that the car is lacking grip, adding that it also needs "more load everywhere", leading to a lack of balance.

"It was a bit too inconsistent every lap," he said. "I was trying to understand the balance of the car lap by lap, so I made a change, and it didn't fix the issue. It's hard to work and make progress when, lap by lap, the balance changes."

Again, highlighting the discrepancies between Melbourne and Shanghai, he stated: "The two tracks are so far away in terms of characteristics that it shows our weakness in the car."