Laurent Mekies has publicly accepted the blame for ruining Isack Hadjar’s Singapore Grand Prix, admitting Red Bull are in debt to their second-year driver after a cascade of mechanical issues left him running from the pit lane in a car that barely held together.
“We have lost the chance to see Isack’s speed here, so we owe him one,” the Red Bull team principal told reporters at Marina Bay.
He did not soften what had unfolded on the garage’s second side.
“We had a pretty horrific weekend on Isack’s side of the garage. We basically didn’t give him any chance to do any competitive laps before the main race.”
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For Hadjar, promoted alongside Max Verstappen for 2026, the admission is cold comfort. His frustration spilled out in the paddock.
“Since Malaysia, I’m just desperate to have a car that’s working a bit better on my side to fight for a win,” Hadjar said.
A session-by-session breakdown
The 22-year-old’s trouble began in Friday’s Sprint Qualifying with power unit problems and deepened on Saturday, when another PU failure ended his Sprint on the third lap. Red Bull fitted an older power unit for qualifying, but a gearbox issue that cost him fourth gear meant he could not set a lap time in Q1.
Permission from the stewards was required to even take the start. From the pit lane, Hadjar recovered to tenth, passing nine cars for a single championship point.
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“It was challenging for my mechanics. They suffered quite a lot for just one point,” he said.
From Baku podium to Sepang heartbreak
Context explains the sharpness. In Baku, Hadjar scored his first podium with a cleanly executed drive to third. The Malaysian Grand Prix that followed looked set to deliver another before a late battery problem at Sepang dropped him from third to fifth.
Marina Bay was supposed to be the recovery. Instead it became what Mekies called a “nightmare weekend” of power unit, gearbox and other glitches.
“I’m just really, really pissed off,” Hadjar said earlier in the weekend, after the gearbox failure in qualifying.
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Austin as the reset
Hadjar is already turning the page to the United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of The Americas.
“We need to reset and understand what has happened since Sunday in Malaysia, and to make sure we come back in Austin and fight for podiums.”
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