https://autoracer.it/hadjar-problemi-au ... bull-gara/Regarding the retirement on the engine side, he said: "I think the problem was the temperatures, not the battery. And the sound of the engine was terrible. I knew it would explode.
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/what ... 026-start/The impact on laptime is significant, especially in an era where the nature of energy harvesting and deployment means that the old estimate of 10kg being equivalent to 0.3 seconds per lap has gone. It is now worth more than that.
Asked by The Race if the car was 20kg overweight, would that still mean 0.6s, Vowles said: “So if it was 20kg, it's more than that.
“It isn't just the effect of mass. When people calculate that number, they don't take into account CofG [centre of gravity] height changes.
“They do not take into account the impact that you now have on harvesting, of which it's minimum apex speed, of which that's impacted by weight. So it's bigger.”
Hadjar engine problem“So I would not say that we are surprised with the gap we see here. It’s probably also what we felt we would end up having to deal with.”
“Overall number today, it was probably close to the second a lap, I would say,”
“As it turned out, I think it’s pretty accurate. It was probably a touch better than that this weekend, in the way that Isack was P3 on the grid on a clean qualifying. So he’s done a very good job there to maximise everything
Asked whether this also means Red Bull can be in the fight for the titles as the season goes on, Mekies said,“I would not say that we have the reason 100 per cent, but it’s getting pretty close. We think it’s a combination of factors,” he said.
“We’ve tried to have a couple of actions to stay on the safe side for the race, and some more work will be done between here and China.”
“We have the ambition and the obligations to do better, yes, but the starting point is that we were fighting here. We think we’ll be fighting in China, and then we’ll start the development race, we’ll start the learning race.
https://www.planetf1.com/news/laurent-m ... on-testing some more quotes on here too.“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying we are in the fight because the season is very long, and being top four is the right starting point compared to where the project is at. We have the ambition and obligations to target that.
“We’ll be in the fight of this top four, hopefully, next week, and then after, we need to develop faster than the competition.”
The answer above was given in response to Max's qualifying crash, not Hadjar's engine failure. It was preceded by this:euv2 wrote: ↑11 Mar 2026, 13:38Hadjar engine problem“I would not say that we have the reason 100 per cent, but it’s getting pretty close. We think it’s a combination of factors,” he said.
“We’ve tried to have a couple of actions to stay on the safe side for the race, and some more work will be done between here and China.”
“We have the ambition and the obligations to do better, yes, but the starting point is that we were fighting here. We think we’ll be fighting in China, and then we’ll start the development race, we’ll start the learning race.
it’s a reasonable assumption that Verstappen may have been able to be ahead of Hadjar had he not suffered his qualifying incident, and Mekies said the team’s investigation into the incident that compromised his weekend had resulted in some caution for the race.
I see, but the impression I'm getting from Mekies is, theree won't be a fight for any championship this season, the plan seems to be to close the gap to Merc in the 2nd half of the season and hope to get a few wins and then try to win the championships with RB23.AR3-GP wrote: ↑11 Mar 2026, 13:44The answer above was given in response to Max's qualifying crash, not Hadjar's engine failure. It was preceded by this:euv2 wrote: ↑11 Mar 2026, 13:38Hadjar engine problem“I would not say that we have the reason 100 per cent, but it’s getting pretty close. We think it’s a combination of factors,” he said.
“We’ve tried to have a couple of actions to stay on the safe side for the race, and some more work will be done between here and China.”
“We have the ambition and the obligations to do better, yes, but the starting point is that we were fighting here. We think we’ll be fighting in China, and then we’ll start the development race, we’ll start the learning race.
it’s a reasonable assumption that Verstappen may have been able to be ahead of Hadjar had he not suffered his qualifying incident, and Mekies said the team’s investigation into the incident that compromised his weekend had resulted in some caution for the race.
Indeed we need to lose some weight, and then free-time will come.AR3-GP wrote: ↑11 Mar 2026, 13:14James Vowles says 10kg is worth more than the traditional estimate of 3 tenths due to the new formula.
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/what ... 026-start/The impact on laptime is significant, especially in an era where the nature of energy harvesting and deployment means that the old estimate of 10kg being equivalent to 0.3 seconds per lap has gone. It is now worth more than that.
Asked by The Race if the car was 20kg overweight, would that still mean 0.6s, Vowles said: “So if it was 20kg, it's more than that.
“It isn't just the effect of mass. When people calculate that number, they don't take into account CofG [centre of gravity] height changes.
“They do not take into account the impact that you now have on harvesting, of which it's minimum apex speed, of which that's impacted by weight. So it's bigger.”
It looked more like 7-8 tenths to me but gaps have a bigger "sticker shock" in 2026 than the effort required to bridge them.Badger wrote: ↑11 Mar 2026, 15:01Mekies seems like a very cautious character, his style seems to be "underpromise and overdeliver". If you'd taken him at his word you would have thought the engine was going to struggle a lot, the chassis was squarely 4th best, and the pace to the front was a second. In reality the engine has been better than expected, the chassis was 3rd best in Melbourne, and the pace to the front was more like half a second in the race.
And yeah I know people say Merc were "cruising", but this was hardly a perfect race for Max either spending probably half of it in traffic.AR3-GP wrote: ↑11 Mar 2026, 15:02It looked more like 7-8 tenths to me but gaps have a bigger "sticker shock" in 2026 than the effort required to bridge them.Badger wrote: ↑11 Mar 2026, 15:01Mekies seems like a very cautious character, his style seems to be "underpromise and overdeliver". If you'd taken him at his word you would have thought the engine was going to struggle a lot, the chassis was squarely 4th best, and the pace to the front was a second. In reality the engine has been better than expected, the chassis was 3rd best in Melbourne, and the pace to the front was more like half a second in the race.
