Verstappen expected to 'overtake off the line, if anything' on home soil
Isack Hadjar was the surprise of qualifying for the Dutch Grand Prix, as the rookie completed his best ever Saturday in Zandvoort.
Hadjar will start from the second row of the grid and alongside Max Verstappen on Sunday after finishing in P4.
At the Hungaroring ahead of the summer break, the rookie was admittedly not satisfied with his performance in qualifying, saying, "Making it to Q3 is good, but then once you're in Q3, you need to do something with it. I didn't."
That was not the case on this occasion. "Very happy. Finally I'm quite satisfied with what I did. It was a good job for me," he told GPblog among others.
"It was the car being exactly like I wanted. It was responding really well, especially on that final lap.
"Probably we got a bit lucky with the wind gusts. I don't know, we need to look at the data. I pulled an amazing lap and it sticked because the car was great," he explained.
The rookie saw also himself completing a 'special lap' at a difficult track.
"It's probably the best lap I've had this year because it's a very hard track, really demanding. I put it all on the line, especially that final corner, I thought I did pretty well there to actually gain one more tenth. Yeah, that was special."
Hadjar sees Verstappen overtaking, instead of being overtaken
The Racing Bulls driver will line-up alongside the four-time world champion on Sunday. Hadjar explained he does not expect to have the chance to overtake Verstappen tomorrow.
"He's starting on the clean side of the grid. He has great starts usually. So, actually I expect him to probably overtake a car ahead, if anything."
In terms of his team's race pace, he continued: "I mean, I haven't experienced it, obviously. We limited mileage yesterday, but looking at Liam, he was pretty fast yesterday. The car is healthy. It's fast on one lap, so it will be fast on many more laps.
Behind the rookie, George Russell and the two Ferrari cars - in the order of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton -, will line up on the grid.
"To be fair, I don't think it's really difficult to overtake here. Looking it how long the straight is and the DRS zone starts very early.
"So if they have more pace, they will overtake. And that's it. We need to accept it and be smart," he concluded.
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