"I don't know what [Sainz] was doing": Hadjar suffers first Q1 elimination of the 2025 season at Monza

Written By James Mclean

The rapid Frenchman had the opposite of the luck he had last weekend - instead suffering two excursions, and a flare up with the Williams of Carlos Sainz, ultimately leading to Hadjar missing out on Q2 by eight hundreths.

Isack Hadjar blamed an altercation with Carlos Sainz for his early exit | Credit: Red Bull

The standout rookie of the 2025 Formula One season, Isack Hadjar, had his streak of 15 races in which he avoided an exit at the first stage of qualifying broken in Saturday afternoon's shootout at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza.

He suffered an off at the second Lesmo, as well as getting a bit squirrily at Ascari.

The elimination didn't come as suprise for Hadjar, as after being told he would not be seeing Q2, he shared on the team radio: "I mean, yeah obviously. Of course."

He later went into more detail into the media pen as to why he made such a statement, stating:

"I mean, the hard lap was a mess with Carlos [Sainz]. He was just playing around a lot.

"Then let me by, and, I don't know why he even went out on track in the first place on new tyres to just cruise around and I don't know what was the point.

"I just don't know what he was doing."

Credit: Red Bull

The 20-year-old did mention that he felt there was more pace in the car than a 16th place on the grid but felt a mistake on his part contributed:

"I mean, we actually went really fast. That was really good. And, yeah, then I made a mistake on my lap, and that's it."

It gets worse for Hadjar as he will be starting from the very back of the grid, after taking a grid penalty, so if he's to replicate the celebrations from Zaandvort come tommorow afternoon, he's going to need to deliver the performance of a lifetime.