‘Grumpy’ or just Fernando? Hadjar bites back after elbows‑out Singapore scrap
Isack Hadjar isn’t here to play nice. The Racing Bulls rookie traded paint and barbs with Fernando Alonso under the Singapore lights, and when the Aston Martin veteran handed him a sarcastic “trophy for hero of the race” over team radio, Hadjar lobbed one right back: if Alonso didn’t enjoy the fight, “he’s really grumpy.”
The flashpoint came in a stop‑start Grand Prix where both drivers had more to manage than they’d like. Hadjar started P18 at Marina Bay, two spots ahead of Alonso after a scruffy Aston Martin Saturday. Alonso cleared Oliver Bearman early and dived past Hadjar at the hairpin on lap 3, but a slow AMR pit stop later reset the order and put the green car back behind the baby blue one.
From there, it got spicy. Hadjar was nursing what he called an engine issue, especially on the straights, but he refused to roll over. Alonso tried to line him up lap after lap, the Racing Bulls weaving a tight defensive tapestry through the braking zones and exits. The decisive moment arrived on lap 37, wheel‑to‑wheel and on the edge, before Alonso finally broke free — and delivered his trademark needle on the radio: “Trophy for hero of the race!”
Post‑race, Alonso, 44 and not known for mincing words, suggested Hadjar should’ve picked his battles. “Sometimes you need to know when it’s better to fight, when it’s not,” he said. “He had a little bit of an engine problem… Some unnecessary risk. I understand this is Singapore and you need to fight hard, but we lost time for sure.”
Hadjar’s answer was as clean as his defending. “I didn’t push him off the track. I kept it clean,” he said. “If he didn’t enjoy that fight then he’s really grumpy, and there’s nothing I can do for him.”
Told of the rookie’s jab, Alonso doubled down. “Some movements at 300 km/h are a little bit borderline in Singapore,” he said. “But everyone races as they want and there was no contact, so everything is fine. They have a very fast car, they don’t have many points, so it’s more their problem.”
That last line cut close to a broader theme of Racing Bulls’ season: speed to burn, points to prove. On a night when opportunism was rewarded, Alonso came home seventh after Lewis Hamilton’s post‑race penalty, while Hadjar missed the top 10 in P11 — more evidence of promise without payoff for Faenza.
There’s also context worth reading between the lines. Marina Bay rewards patience and precision; it punishes anything less. Hadjar, inexperienced at this level but not shy, defended hard without crossing the line in the eyes that matter — the stewards’. Alonso, meanwhile, carries a veteran’s code about when to yield and when to go to war, especially when the car ahead is limping. Two generations, two philosophies, same patch of asphalt. No surprise the radios lit up.
Hadjar later revealed it wasn’t just the power unit hampering him. “The whole second half of the race, or more, I had other issues than just the heat,” he said. “A lot of vibrations in the car, and had a bit of a headache.” In that light, the Racing Bulls’ resilience was as much survival as it was stubbornness.
The constructors’ subplot adds a little extra sting. With Alonso’s points and Hadjar’s near‑miss, Aston Martin and Racing Bulls head to the United States Grand Prix separated by just four points. One good Sunday swings that pendulum either way, and both teams have shown enough pace this year to make life uncomfortable for each other — and for anyone unlucky enough to get caught behind them on a street track.
Alonso’s “trophy” line will grab the headlines, because of course it will. But the takeaway might be simpler: Hadjar looks like a driver who belongs, elbows out and unafraid of reputations. Alonso looks like a driver who still expects the paddock to live by a set of old‑school rules he’s spent two decades enforcing.
Singapore didn’t hand either of them what they really wanted. It did, however, give us a glimpse of a rivalry with some bite. And if Hadjar keeps defending like that, he won’t need a trophy for heroics. He’ll get a real one soon enough.
