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)