Hadjar loses 21 places from the line as Red Bull's start crisis deepens ahead of Austria

Isack Hadjar has lost 21 positions from race starts across the opening seven rounds of the 2026 Formula 1 season, with Red Bull heading to the Austrian Grand Prix under pressure to solve what team principal Laurent Mekies has called a “very narrow window” problem with their new power unit.

The Frenchman’s worst moment came at the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona, where an anti-stall failure buried him from sixth on the grid to 13th by the end of lap one. It was the starkest illustration yet of a recurring issue that has plagued both Red Bull and its sister outfit Racing Bulls since the season began.

Hadjar was clear that the fault lies with the car, not his execution. “To make it clear, it’s not human error on my side. That’s for sure,” he said. “I think the procedure is simple and I know how to achieve it. It’s just deeper issues. In Barcelona the whole weekend, every time I dropped the clutch, it was going nowhere.”

He identified only two clean getaways all season — the sprint race in Canada and the opening race in Monaco — and said the team has been working intensively on the problem since Barcelona. “I told the guys it’s the main point to focus on over the last week,” Hadjar added. “Let’s see from FP1 how I feel.”

Max Verstappen has not been immune either. The world champion stalled from the front row in Monaco and was forced to retire before completing a lap, and has since acknowledged the team’s starts have been broadly below par. “Just look at my starts in general — throughout the season, I don’t think they have been particularly great,” Verstappen said. “We just have some limitations at the moment with the engine, clutch, stuff like that, that we need to optimise.”

The problem extends across the Red Bull family. At Racing Bulls, both Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad lost a combined 10 positions on lap one in Spain, underlining that the issue is systemic rather than isolated to a single driver or chassis.

The Red Bull-Ford Powertrains unit has otherwise been regarded as one of the strongest on the grid in its debut season — widely cited as the most powerful V6 in the field — making the launch-phase weakness all the more frustrating for a team that entered 2026 as a title contender. Austria, where Red Bull enjoys home-race status, raises the stakes further for a fix.