Racing Bulls’ Hadjar reveals the ‘disaster’ that compromised his Bahrain race as Lawson defends himself over brace of penalties

Isack Hadjar and Liam Lawson did not have the best of races in Bahrain, with both drivers coming home down the order – in the case of Lawson after picking up two time penalties for collisions with Lance Stroll and Nico Hulkenberg.

Hadjar eventually finished 13th and Lawson 16th on a night where their rivals Haas and Alpine both scored.

Hadjar's race was compromised by the start, the French driver failing to get away well off the line and dropping from 12th to 16th on the opening lap, making his evening even harder to manage.

An early pit stop managed to undercut him past some cars, but he was then running the hard tyres late on behind the Safety Car, which hampered his restart.

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“Just our race start itself was a disaster. I felt like I was not moving on my grid slot so we need to review that because we lost already like two positions there... which was not ideal,” Hadjar explained afterwards.

“Then our pace and strategy was definitely aggressive, it seemed the right way to do it. But the Safety Car killed us at the restart – with used hards it was just too slow.”

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Lawson also found he had pace to burn, but wasn’t in a position to climb back through the field on Sunday as he tried desperately to make up lost ground from a lowly P17 starting grid slot.

He explained what led to the two time penalties, the first earned from contact with Stroll's Aston Martin around the Safety Car period, while the second was handed down when he was fighting with Hulkenberg late on in the race.

“I was pretty much just on a gearbox of a car the entire race. We had really good speed, just couldn’t use it. To be honest, the only way I could overtake was lunging quite late, I wasn’t intentionally touching with others, but it is what it is. Last stint was okay, obviously just a shame,” he added.

“It’s a shame we don’t have a result to show it, the car was really fast in Quali, didn’t get to show it and then the car was really fast in the race, but you don’t get to show it from the back.”

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After two race weekends back with Racing Bulls, Lawson will be hoping something starts to click for him in Jeddah, with 17th and 16th his results since his Red Bull demotion, while his best qualifying of the year so far is just 14th.

The New Zealander is one of just four drivers yet to score in 2025 – along with Alpine’s Jack Doohan, Kick Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto and two-time champion, Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso – while Hadjar has four points to his name so far this year.