Isack Hadjar can breathe out. The stewards have looked at his pre-race practice start breach in Baku, decided he was guilty of it, and then let him off with nothing more than a piece of paper. His third place at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix stands, Red Bull’s double podium stays intact, and the whole affair turns out to be a lot of paperwork for very little consequence.
What Hadjar Actually Did Wrong
The investigation centred on the reconnaissance laps before the race, specifically on where drivers are allowed to carry out practice starts and how they are meant to rejoin the circuit afterwards. According to the stewards, Hadjar did not complete a practice start at all, and instructions required him to cross the white line separating pit exit from the track at the earliest opportunity to rejoin the normal racing line. Instead, he stayed on the pit-exit road and passed to the right of the cars ahead before rejoining, which the stewards ruled was a clear failure to follow the race director’s instructions.
So the breach itself is not in dispute. The stewards found it, wrote it down and confirmed it happened. What saved Hadjar was the context around it.
Why He Got Away With It
The stewards accepted that Hadjar had to abandon his planned practice start, and concluded he was “distracted” when he failed to follow the correct procedure afterwards. That distraction was enough to tip the outcome in his favour.
“While the driver remains responsible for complying with the Race Director’s instructions, the Stewards considered these circumstances sufficient to mitigate the penalty. Having also considered comparable previous incidents, the Stewards therefore determine that a Warning, rather than a Driving Reprimand, is appropriate.” – FIA stewards
A warning, not even a reprimand. In the hierarchy of things the FIA can slap on a driver, that is about as gentle as it gets, as reported by RacingNews365. No points on the licence, no grid drop for Malaysia, nothing that touches the result in Baku. It is the regulatory equivalent of a stern look followed by a shrug.
A Podium Worth Protecting
Context matters here, because this was not just any weekend for Hadjar. He was making his return after missing the previous three grands prix with a wrist injury, and he marked it by qualifying as the leading Red Bull car before finishing third behind race-winner George Russell and team-mate Max Verstappen. It was, by any measure, one of the better comebacks of the season, and the stewards stripping it away over a procedural mix-up on the reconnaissance laps would have felt like a particularly cruel way to end it. As it stands, the standings still show Hadjar on zero points from his last three outings before Baku, sitting eighth overall on 86 points, so this podium is not a nice-to-have. It is a meaningful chunk of a season that had otherwise gone quiet while he recovered.
The stewards clearly agree there is a difference between a driver who cynically ignores instructions and one who gets caught out scrambling to adjust a plan mid-lap. Whether every driver in the paddock would get the same benefit of the doubt is a separate question, and one the stewards do not have to answer today.
Not the Only Name on the List
Carlos Sainz was investigated for an almost identical offence at the same practice start location, though his weekend had already taken a harder hit earlier when he picked up a five-place grid penalty for failing to slow under yellow flags in qualifying, a separate incident covered in detail after the session. The practice start question was very much a shared problem before this race even started, not something unique to Hadjar, and an earlier piece covered Hadjar’s summons before the stewards’ verdict was known.
What This Says About the Stewards’ Mood
Baku’s stewards had a busy afternoon by any standard, working through a queue of incidents that included a time penalty for Franco Colapinto converted into a grid drop for the next race, and separate matters involving other drivers from the same weekend.
Red Bull will not be complaining. A double podium, with Verstappen closing in during the closing stages before eventually settling for second, is exactly the kind of afternoon the team needed after a season that has largely been about chasing Mercedes and Ferrari rather than beating them. Hadjar’s third place holds, his warning goes in the file, and Baku becomes just another race weekend where the stewards had the final word and chose to use it kindly.
