Red Bull admits mistake as Hadjar’s car deemed illegal post-qualifying

Isack Hadjar has been excluded from the qualifying results at the Miami Grand Prix after his car’s floor boards were found to not comply with the technical regulations.

During post-qualifying scrutineering, the technical delegate noted that Hadjar’s floor boards were protruding 2mm out of the reference volume that defines their positioning limits. A hearing was convened early on Sunday morning in Miami where Red Bull did not dispute the findings, leading to an automatic disqualification from the classification.

“We made a mistake and we respect the decision of the stewards,” team principal Laurent Mekies said. “No performance advantage was intended nor gained from this error. We will learn from this incident and assess our processes to understand how it occurred and to take steps to ensure it cannot happen again.

“As a team, we apologize to Isack, and to our fans and partners. We learn the hard way today but we will move forward. Now our focus is on converting yesterday’s encouraging showing into a strong race performance this afternoon.”

The Frenchman had originally qualified in ninth place on Saturday, with teammate Max Verstappen delivering Red Bull’s best qualifying performance of the season so far with a front row start in second.

Hadjar will be permitted to start the race due to the lap times set earlier in the weekend. Red Bull has also taken the opportunity to change two power unit components, exceeding the number of energy store and control electronics allowed for the season.