MONACO, June 7 (Reuters) - France's Isack Hadjar began the Monaco Grand Prix weekend with a high-speed crash in first practice but ended it with his second career podium after a gutsy third place finish in his Red Bull on Sunday.
Battling a power-unit problem throughout the race, Hadjar held on after the restart following a late red flag, although he had an anxious wait while stewards investigated a technical infringement by his team.
No action was taken though and Hadjar could finally celebrate.
"For many reasons it's a satisfying result because obviously I started the weekend in the worst way possible," he told reporters. "It's a track you want to build confidence throughout every lap and if anything I lost all my confidence in FP2 because I just didn't have any feeling with my car.
"The race was difficult and I had to dig very deep. We got off to a clean start and were managing our race, and then within the first 10 to 15 laps I started having big drivability issues.
"If there's one track you don't want that, it's here, so that was incredibly challenging having to cover 60 laps."
Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies explained the incident during the red flag stoppage which caused the investigation.
"There was a fair amount of confusion there, but we were trying to rectify the (power unit) issue and we got instructed to leave the car as such, which we did," he said.
With a near 40-minute suspension of the race for the red flag while the track was checked, Hadjar said it was 'the longest race of his life'.
"But now it's finished we got the podium," he said.
(Reporting by Martyn Herman, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
