K6 Runner test not starting when Istio injects sidecar

Hello, would appreciate some guidance or advice dealing with this problem that I have.

Some context. Currently, I have a web application deployed on a Kubernetes cluster running Istio to manage traffic so all my pods are running with an Istio sidecar. In order for any k6 runner to send requests to other pods they need a sidecar so I enabled Istio injections for the runners specifically. This is my custom resource which I apply for the operator to start the tests.

apiVersion: k6{period}io/v1alpha1
kind: TestRun
metadata:
name: test
namespace: k6-operator-system
spec:
parallelism: 1
script:
configMap:
name: k6-load-test-script
file: test.js
initializer:
metadata:
labels:
#Disables istio injection for initializer pod. If not disabled, runner can not come up
sidecar{period}istio{period}io/inject: “false”
starter:
metadata:
labels:
#Disables istio injection for initializer pod. If not disabled, runner can not come up
sidecar{period}istio{period}io/inject: “false”
runner:
metadata:
labels:
#Runner pod needs istio sidecar to communicate with rest of pods that also have a sidecar
sidecar{period}istio{period}io/inject: “true”
image: grafana/k6:latest

My namespace has a label which enables Istio injections as well.

The initializer pod spins up fine, no sidecar and the runner shortly after with a sidecar. However, a starter pod never appears and when I check the logs of the k6-operator, I notice the error:

ERROR Reconciler error {“controller”: “testrun”, “controllerGroup”: “k6.io”, “controllerKind”: “TestRun”, “T │
│ estRun”: {“name”:“test”,“namespace”:“k6-operator-system”}, “namespace”: “k6-operator-system”, “name”: “test”, “reconcileID”: “60de4659-e769-4406-b │
│ 2d8-730cf5f24364”, “error”: “test-service-1 service is not ready”}

When I have Istio injections disabled for the namespace, the runner ends up without a sidecar but the starter pod appears and the test begins. Although it fails as the runner pod can not successfully send any traffic to other pods without a sidecar.

Is something misconfigured? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Replaced some periods with {period} as I am not allowed to post links but they are not links.