Hadjar fumes at Sainz after Monza Q1 exit: “Super annoying on the out-lap”
Isack Hadjar arrived at Monza riding the high of his first F1 podium. He left qualifying with a sore head and a pointed gripe: Carlos Sainz ruined his out-lap.
The Racing Bulls rookie was bounced out in Q1 for the first time in his young F1 career on Saturday, sliding wide at Lesmo 2 on his final attempt. What really stung wasn’t the mistake, but how he felt he’d been forced into it after being caught up behind Sainz on the run-up to that lap.
“He was just super annoying on the out-lap,” Hadjar said, frustrated and direct in the Monza paddock. “He wasn’t going to push anyway. I don’t know why he fought so hard for track position and then just let me by on my lap, so I compromised the out-lap for nothing. Later on, I made a mistake — but honestly, all of that doesn’t matter because I’m starting last tomorrow.”
Hadjar confirmed he’ll serve an engine penalty on Sunday, turning a rough qualifying into a salvage job. It didn’t help the mindset heading in. “I hate going into qualifying knowing I’m starting last,” he admitted. “I like having pressure going into quali and this was just wrong. The mentality was probably not great.”
Monza’s qualifying etiquette is always a minefield, and out-lap games are part of the bargain at the Temple of Speed. Drivers hunt a tow and fight for the cleanest pocket of space; teams choreograph out-laps down to the metre, and it still turns into a rolling traffic jam. But this one riled Racing Bulls in particular, not least because it lands amid a simmering feud with Sainz.
Less than a week ago, the Williams driver picked up a 10-second penalty and two penalty points for a Lap 1 clash with Hadjar’s teammate Liam Lawson at Zandvoort — a call Williams has moved to review. Lawson arrived in Italy bristling, accusing Sainz of “mouthing off to everybody” about the incident. Now Hadjar’s weighing in too.
Whether Sainz was actually setting up his own lap or just defending a spot in the train, Hadjar felt the cost. “It could reach Q3,” he said of the car’s potential. “It’s the first time this season a Saturday hasn’t gone to plan. Everything went wrong and I made a mistake also on my lap.” Asked if there was floor damage as a result of the Lesmo moment, he offered only: “Yeah. I had a tough sector three.”
The underlying pace is there, he reckons, but he wasn’t sugarcoating the task. “If I’m starting in the top 10, we have a shot at points. But we can’t overtake 10 cars on pure pace and with a good strategy. It doesn’t happen.”
There’s a bigger story playing out here. Racing Bulls’ two youngsters have both had run-ins with Sainz in the space of a week, and their team has the car — the VCARB02 — hooked up enough to make qualifying position matter. Hadjar’s podium at Zandvoort showed that when the pieces fall into place, they’ve got teeth. But at Monza, a scruffy out-lap, a rookie error, and an unavoidable Sunday penalty turned it into a weekend to endure.
Sainz, for his part, tends to be uncompromising in the pre-lap dance — and at Monza, everyone’s selfish. That’s the game. The problem for Racing Bulls is they walked into it twice: once at Turn 1 in Zandvoort, once at 330 kph on a formation run in Italy.
Hadjar will start last. If he leaves with anything, it’ll be data, lessons, and a reminder of how razor-thin the margins are when the field is this tight. One week you’re on the podium; the next, you’re watching Q2 from the garage, replaying an out-lap in your head and wishing you’d been 30 metres further forward.
Sunday’s job is simple: stay clean, be opportunistic, and see if strategy can drag the blue car into the conversation. But as Hadjar put it, there are no miracles here. Not at Monza, not from the back — and not when your qualifying starts before the lap does.
