Isack Hadjar Took the F1 Seat That Breaks Drivers. So Far, It Has Not Broken Him

• Isack Hadjar lines up alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull in 2026, taking on the second seat that has worn down Pierre Gasly, Alexander Albon, Sergio Perez and Liam Lawson.
• The 21-year-old has been strikingly honest about the experience, admitting moments where he thinks, “What the hell am I doing here?”
• Team principal Laurent Mekies says Red Bull’s job is to shield the rookie from pressure while he settles, insisting Hadjar is already “doing everything right.”

There is no seat in Formula 1 quite like the one next to Max Verstappen. It comes with the best machinery Red Bull can build, the full weight of a champion’s expectations, and a recent history that reads like a warning label. Pierre Gasly was pulled out of it mid-season. Alexander Albon was dropped from it. Sergio Perez eventually left it. Liam Lawson barely got to warm it up before he was moved aside.

Into that seat, for 2026, has stepped Isack Hadjar, a 21-year-old in only his second year of Formula 1. On paper it is the promotion of a lifetime. In practice it is one of the toughest assignments in world sport, and Hadjar knows it.

What has stood out so far is not his lap time or his points tally but his honesty. Rather than pretend the move has been seamless, he has openly described the strange, dizzying reality of finding himself there at all.

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The seat that has broken better-known names

Red Bull’s second car has a reputation that precedes it. The team’s relentless internal culture, built around serving its lead driver, has a way of exposing whoever sits alongside Verstappen. Gasly arrived as a race winner in waiting and was sent back to the junior team within months. Albon lost his drive and had to rebuild his career elsewhere. Perez, a proven Grand Prix winner, slowly saw his confidence eroded before the partnership ended.

Most recently, Lawson was handed the role and then removed from it after only a handful of weekends, a decision so swift it shocked even seasoned observers. The message to anyone watching was blunt. This is not a seat that forgives a slow start.

So when Red Bull turned to Hadjar, a driver with a single season of Formula 1 behind him, the question was not whether he was fast. It was whether he could survive the environment that had unsettled drivers with far more experience.

From Racing Bulls rookie to Verstappen’s teammate

Hadjar earned the call. The French-Algerian spent 2025 with Racing Bulls, the team’s sister outfit, and made a strong impression. He finished his debut campaign 12th in the standings with 51 points and took his maiden podium at the Dutch Grand Prix, a result that announced him as more than a development project.

Those who worked with him kept pointing to the same trait: an ability to be quick almost immediately on a new circuit or in an unfamiliar car. In a sport where adaptation is everything, that flexibility is rare, and it is a large part of why Red Bull decided he was ready to step up rather than wait another year.

Still, there is a vast gap between impressing at the junior team and being measured, weekend after weekend, against one of the greatest drivers of the era. Hadjar has not tried to hide how surreal that leap has felt.

“What the hell am I doing here?”

Asked whether his Red Bull move had truly sunk in, Hadjar gave an answer far more candid than the usual rookie script. “There are moments where I do realise what’s happening and I’m up for the challenge,” he said, “and sometimes like, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’”

It is the kind of line most young drivers would keep to themselves, wary of looking out of their depth. Hadjar said it out loud, and in doing so revealed a self-awareness that may be one of his greatest assets. He admitted he felt deeply stressed at the start of the year, weighed down by limited mileage and enormous expectation, only to find that the worst of his fears never materialised once he was in the rhythm of a race weekend.

That honesty cuts against the image of the bulletproof Red Bull driver. It also makes him easy to root for, a young man openly processing the scale of where he has landed rather than pretending it is all routine.

A regulation reset that levels the field

Hadjar has at least arrived at an unusual moment. The 2026 rules overhaul reset the cars almost completely, with new aerodynamics, new power units and a fresh design philosophy. In theory that gives Verstappen and Hadjar the same starting point, with neither able to lean on years of accumulated setup knowledge that previously favoured the established driver.

The catch is that Red Bull’s new car has not been the class of the field. The team has spent the season chasing the front rather than leading from it, which means Hadjar is learning the most demanding seat in the sport in a car that does not paper over mistakes. Verstappen’s lone early podium, in Canada, underlined just how far the team has slipped from its dominant years.

Being measured against a four-time champion is hard enough when the car is winning. Doing it while the team fights through its worst season in memory raises the difficulty again, and yet Hadjar has kept his head.

Red Bull’s plan to protect him

Incoming team principal Laurent Mekies has been notably careful in how he talks about his rookie. He has stressed that the team is “very strongly behind him,” and that part of their job is to shield Hadjar from the external pressure that has swallowed others in the same position.

Mekies has also been clear about where Hadjar needs to grow, framing it around composure: the driver “has to control his emotions,” a nod to the fiery streak Hadjar has shown when things go wrong. The team’s internal mantra, that the steering wheel has no fault, is a reminder to look at process rather than lash out in the heat of the moment.

It is a more patient tone than Red Bull has always taken with its second driver, and it suggests the team understands that constant public pressure may have hurt previous occupants of the seat as much as helped them.

Still standing

As the season rolls on towards the Austrian Grand Prix and Red Bull’s home race, Hadjar’s story is quietly one of the more compelling on the grid. He has not lit up the championship, but in the most punishing environment in Formula 1, simply holding his ground is an achievement in itself.

The history of the seat says the pressure usually wins in the end. Hadjar’s openness about the doubt, paired with the calm he has somehow kept hold of, hints at a driver who might just be built differently. For now, the seat that breaks drivers has met a 21-year-old who keeps getting back in it, eyes open, and asks only that he be judged on what he does next.

There is also a longer game at play. Red Bull did not promote Hadjar to fill a gap for a few months; they see him as a driver who could grow into a fixture. That belief buys him a little patience, but it also raises the stakes, because the team is effectively betting that the lessons of the past few years have taught it how to bring a young talent through rather than burn one out.

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Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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