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Red Bull is not sure when it will be able to repair its new Formula 1 car after Isack Hadjar’s Tuesday crash and team principal Laurent Mekies said “we will try our best” to fix it this week.
Hadjar ended up backwards in the wall at the final corner of the Barcelona circuit after what seems to have been driver error in wet conditions on Tuesday afternoon.
It brought Red Bull’s second day of testing to an early end and damaged the rear of the car although the extent is unknown.
Lead image courtesy of @ekaitzgilf1
Red Bull only has one day of testing left this week as has used two of its three permitted days already. The teams have booked Barcelona for five days with some - like McLaren and Aston Martin - yet to run at all.
Although the flexibility Red Bull has to run on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday means that Hadjar’s crash should give it time to repair the car and run again, Mekies said the team could only “try our best to repair the car and see what’s coming next”.
It is possible that with the cars being so new, Red Bull is short on spares. Mekies said Red Bull “can’t wait to have the next possibility to run but it's something we are trying to analyse now and hopefully we get some answers a bit later on”.
“The priority right now, as we speak tonight, is to assess the damage on the car, is to see what does it give to us in terms of opportunities to run in the next days,” he said.
“We only have one day left, so we have to make sure we play that card carefully and it's an analysis that will take still a few hours.”
That at least suggests Red Bull only needs Tuesday evening at the track to assess the damage, what its options are, and which day of running could be feasible if it has what is needed to make repairs.
Hadjar’s crash was an unfortunate setback after a very encouraging first day as a Red Bull Racing driver.
He was quickest on Monday and completed more than 100 laps, then took over the RB22 again from Max Verstappen on Tuesday afternoon which gave him some useful wet running.
“It was very tricky conditions this afternoon, so very unfortunate that it finished that way, but it's part of the game,” said Mekies.
“These difficulties came after a very, very positive day yesterday in terms of the number of laps Isack could complete in the car, and in terms of his learning and development and feedback to the engineers.”
If there is any knock-on effect for Red Bull’s programme it will presumably be at the expense of a full Verstappen day in the car given he had only participated in the first few hours of Tuesday.
It is important for the four-time world champion to get on track properly as his first runs in the RB22 were already compromised by the weather – although it will not be a defining part of his pre-season with two tests in Bahrain still to come.
“We only got one run worth of dry running before the rain came,” said Mekies.
“We felt, anyway, that it was interesting to run in the rain, also with these regulations, and obviously everything is new.”
He added: “The checklist is too long to be completed in just a few days in Barcelona.
“So it's always going to be a matter of priority, and trying to be flexible and adapt your programme as difficulties come out or in terms of when you find an interesting direction that you should pursue.”
