Red Bull was sceptical about Isack Hadjar when he was given his Formula 1 shot with Racing Bulls this year. Yet just nine races into his grand prix career, his performances have allayed many of those concerns and established him as the favourite for another promotion in 2026 if Yuki Tsunoda does not get on top of the Red Bull.
That's not only the perception from the outside, but also the growing feeling within Red Bull. Ideally, Tsunoda will crack it. He will almost certainly see out the season and only a disastrous run making his position untenable will change this, but with alternatives thin on the ground, Hadjar is a serious contender. However, there's no change on the horizon, and as Red Bull team principal Christian Horner stressed at the Spanish Grand Prix, there's still plenty of time.
"It's early days for Yuki," said Horner when asked about the possibility of Hadjar getting a promotion. "He's still settling in. He's been in Q3, scored points, he's scored points from the pitlane. He's had a few incidents as well, so he has a long way to go. We'll decide. We've got plenty of time on our side."
But to be in the ‘next in line' position is a remarkable turnaround in perception for Hadjar, who was effectively given the Racing Bulls seat by default.
Once Red Bull axed Sergio Perez and promoted Liam Lawson, a space opened up at its second team and Hadjar was the next cab off the rank after finishing as runner-up in Formula 2.
Effectively, he was the only cab that was ready to go, and Red Bull had doubts about his approach and mentality. He'd not made an impact with his three FP1 outings for the team across 2023 and '24 (although his Mexico outing for what was then called AlphaTauri was more impressive), so expectations weren't high.
However, since his disastrous debut in Australia, where he qualified solidly but crashed on the formation lap, Hadjar has convinced Red Bull that he is now the second-quickest driver on its books.
In nine grands prix, Hadjar has scored points five times. That started with his remarkable performance at Suzuka where he headed the midfield pack in qualifying and the race on his way to eighth. In the recent triple header, as more fancied rookies Kimi Antonelli and Ollie Bearman struggled, Hadjar was a fixture in the top 10 both in qualifying and the races. And that's with little preparatory mileage in comparison to them, with his old-car running limited.
In his nine qualifying sessions, he's reached Q3 five times and been eliminated in Q2 four times. On top of that, he also made SQ3 in Miami sprint qualifying. For a rookie, even in a benign car like the Racing Bulls that has usually been in the mix at the front of the pack, never to have dropped the ball in Q1 shows how consistently Hadjar has delivered.
Generally, when he has underachieved, for example in Bahrain, it has only been by small amounts. There, he admitted he was "a bit too conservative towards the end of that lap" in Q2, before making a terrible start and overheating his tyres. That condemned him to a pointless race.
When alongside Tsunoda for the first two races, Hadjar was neck-and-neck with him – with the adjusted average deficit just nine-thousandths of a second. Since Lawson returned, Hadjar has been on average two-tenths faster in qualifying.
The fact that, Australia mishap aside, Hadjar has so often been able to head out and nail it has made a big impression on Red Bull. He's not perfect, with for example a mistake on his Q3 lap at Imola leading to an extended period hitting the steering wheel. The mistake happened at the Tamburello chicane and he was still doing it at Piratella – five corners later. But he gathered himself up and went on to drive well in the race.
It was similar when the physical discomfort he felt at Suzuka in Q1 seemed to be sending him into a spiral, but he pulled it together to get through and went on to make it all the way into the top 10 and score his first points. Likewise, he processed his obvious frustration with hitting the wall twice in Monaco FP2 to score a great qualifying result and subsequent race finish on his F1 debut on the streets of Monte Carlo.
The emotional side is very much there, and has manifested itself on occasion, but so far hasn't been detrimental at all and he has composed himself well when needed. That apparent compartmentalisation is a positive and he will only improve on this score as experience builds.
Many of Red Bull's concerns were about the 20-year-old's emotional control in the cockpit, but although he's no Oscar Piastri-style iceman, this hasn't been a major problem for Hadjar this year. He's been a dependable performer for Racing Bulls and is, in Red Bull's eyes and that of many observers, the rookie of the year so far.
So what? You might ask. After all, many drivers have thrived in Red Bull's second team but floundered when promoted. But Hadjar also made an impression on Red Bull when he drove for the team in the young driver test element of the post-season Abu Dhabi test in 2024. Remember, that day Tsunoda was also driving the Red Bull – with the only difference between the two that Hadjar was using the 2024 Pirellis and Tsunoda the '25 specification.
Hadjar was slightly quicker in the overall times – by 57 thousandths of a second. And while testing times are rarely to be trusted, in this case that did reflect the fact that Red Bull identified Hadjar as the quicker driver throughout the day. That day, his speed made an impression.
Now Hadjar has delivered that speed remarkably regularly for a rookie, with plenty of ups and fewer downs than you would expect for a newcomer, which means that the 20-year-old is now seen as not just a credible candidate for promotion, but the logical one if the team leadership feels it cannot continue with Tsunoda next year.
That's not ideal in terms of timing, but Red Bull is light on alternatives. To lure a proven topliner capable of getting close or on terms with Verstappen – say Charles Leclerc or Piastri – would be prohibitively expensive even if it were possible. And of those drivers who are available, there are few obvious candidates - save perhaps Valtteri, who Red Bull once held serious discussions with before going cold on.
There's no guarantee that Hadjar would be able to make Red Bull work given going up against Max Verstappen in a difficult car has proved beyond a succession of very capable drivers – Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, Perez, Lawson and, right now, Tsunoda.
The Racing Bulls car is arguably the most benign to drive in the field, in that regard the polar opposite of the capricious RB21, so assuming those traits carry over into the all-new 2026 Red Bull that doesn't mean what Hadjar is doing is translatable.
It's also important to note that his default driving style is more towards braking late and attacking the corner, which isn't the approach Verstappen takes. But even so, Hadjar has taken enormous confidence from what he's done in 2025 and would doubtless back himself to thrive in a Red Bull.
"I had doubts at the start of the year," said Hadjar in Monaco. "I didn't have much testing, so I was a bit worried – like, can I handle this car? Is it going to be too fast? But now I don't have any doubts anymore, and I've adapted to it quicker than I hoped for. So far, it's been going better than I anticipated, which is – for me – I can't dream of a better start."
Realistically, Hadjar's development would be better served by a longer stint in Red Bull's second team with a view to a promotion down the line when he's banked more experience. It would be naive to think that his success in a Racing Bulls car means he could go up against Verstappen and thrive when so many very capable drivers have failed and it risks setting him up to fail to do so prematurely. However, if the Tsunoda experiment fails, Hadjar is the leading candidate for promotion unless Red Bull goes outside of its own driver pool.
And history tells us that Red Bull will feel obliged to make a change if Tsunoda can't get on top of the car, even though there is a genuine desire within the team to see him succeed and a realistic hope that he can do provided he accepts that he needs to stop trying to emulate Verstappen and find a way to get the best out of the car with an alternative set-up approach that might lower the ceiling of performance but make it more consistently accessible.
That would be best for Red Bull, and probably for the very promising Hadjar, as well to allow him the time to build experience after a remarkable start to his F1 career.
