Isack Hadjar faces disqualification from Miami Grand Prix qualifying after post-session technical checks found a floor legality breach on the Red Bull-backed car he drove to ninth place.
Hadjar was referred to the stewards after officials found the floor board on his car protruded 2mm too far on the left and right hand side, with the summons set for 7am on Sunday morning. Technical rule breaches are usually treated as black-and-white situations, no matter why they happened, which means disqualification is the likely outcome if the breach is upheld.
The finding comes after Red Bull ran its full upgrade package on Hadjar’s car before qualifying, including revisions to the front of the floor. That package put him on the same specification as Max Verstappen, but Hadjar has been much slower than his team-mate in Miami and has struggled to make the upgrades work over a lap.
Hadjar described the car as “very hard to drive but very fast” and said he “couldn’t put it all together” during qualifying. He called Miami a “very tricky track, very low grip with a high track temperature,” adding that it is “not a very flowy racing track with good grip” and that Verstappen is “very, very good at adapting to these conditions.”
The French driver said his pace was better in the corners than it had been on Friday, but added that he was “missing on every straight.” That gap matters because the stewards’ decision could wipe out a result that had looked like one of his stronger qualifying performances, while also highlighting how quickly a technical oversight can overtake the on-track gains a driver makes.
What happens next is straightforward: Hadjar appears before the stewards at 7am on Sunday morning, and if the floor breach is upheld, the result from qualifying is expected to fall away under the usual black-and-white enforcement of the rules.