Rookie Isack Hadjar walked onto the Formula 1 podium for the first time in his fledgling career at the Dutch Grand Prix.
It looked like he’d been there 100 times already.
“That was always the target since I was a kid,” Hadjar said cooly. “This is a first step, my first podium.”
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Arguably the most underrated debutant of the season, the Frenchman has hardly put a foot wrong.
In the Netherlands he embodied that in extremis.
A sublime qualifying lap put him fourth on the grid behind only the McLaren drivers and Max Verstappen.
In the race he absorbed pressure from George Russell and then Charles Leclerc, both in cars that should have been considerably faster, to hold that position for the entire afternoon.
Norris’s bad luck was then good fortune for the Racing Bulls star, who was promoted onto the rostrum as just reward for a faultless weekend performance.
“I’m really happy about myself because I really maximised what I had,” he said. “I made no mistakes and brought home the podium.
“I was really comfortable on the brakes, made sure I defended the right way, and that’s what we did.”
He’s the second rookie to stand on a podium this season, after Andrea Kimi Antonelli at the Canadian Grand Prix, but his trophy is far more significant.
It’s not just that it’s only the fifth podium ever won by the team under Red Bull ownership.
It’s the context in which his giant-killing result was executed.
Max Verstappen’s commitment to continuing with Red Bull Racing next season has taken only some of the sting out of the Red Bull brand’s F1 driver conundrum.
Yuki Tsunoda’s underperformance alongside the Dutchman has extended beyond the break.
Momentum had already been building behind Hadjar’s elevation to the senior team. Now with a podium to show for his toil, he’s instantly become the favourite to partner Verstappen in 2026.
It’s the most difficult job in Formula 1, a bona fide career killer in search for its next victim.
“I am ready for anything,” Hadjar told Sky Sports.
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DEADLINE SET
Despite its ruthless reputation, Red Bull is no stranger to agonising over a driver decision.
Hand-wringing is the reason it ended up with Sergio Pérez, having wanted to give Alex Albon as long as possible to prove his worth before demoting him from the race team.
It then waited at least six months too long — arguably an entire year — to dispense with Sergio Pérez, making the call only after the end of last season.
Dropping Liam Lawson just two rounds into 2025 was an overcorrection, but Tsunoda’s difficulties have forced it back to the decision-making table.
But this time new team boss Laurent Mekies said Red Bull Racing would be stricter with its deadlines.
“If you look at it from a Red Bull perspective, they are our drivers, we have them all under contract,” he said. “It’s only us making the decisions. Why would you put yourself under pressure based on one result or another?
“The simple truth is that we’ll take our time. There’s nine races to go. I’m not telling you that we’ll wait until the last race, because also there is a dynamic by which you want to let your driver know.
“But we have time. We’re not in any hurry.
“We’re lucky to have Yuki in the car, we have Racing Bulls, which is working very well, and we can also evaluate our young drivers.”
While ‘not the last race’ is inexact, Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko, who is key to driver line-up decisions for the brand, reportedly told Austrian broadcaster ORF that he intends to make a decision around the time of the Mexico City Grand Prix in the middle of October.
That gives Tsunoda five faces between this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix and the chequered flag falling in Mexico to state his case.
You might have thought that would be enough before the break, when the Japanese driver’s fortunes appeared to be improving.
Equipped with most of the same parts available to Verstappen, he was the closest he’s been to his teammate all season in the qualifying session s in Belgium and Hungary.
But his qualifying performance in the Netherlands was a step backwards. Qualifying last among the Red Bull-backed drivers and finishing well behind podium-getter Hadjar, the contrast was stark, and the forecast suddenly looked grim.
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HOW BADLY HAS TSUNODA BEEN DOING?
The statistics paint a grim picture.
Tsunoda’s vital statistics
Qualifying result: 12.6 average
Qualifying head to head: 0-12
Qualifying deficit: 9.0 places
Time deficit: 0.506 seconds
Race result: 12.8 average
Race head to head: 0-11
Race deficit: 8.09 places
Points deficit: 160 points (9-169)
It’s worth considering that Hadjar’s average qualifying result is 9.7 and his average finishing position is 10.5, both well ahead of Tsunoda.
His average qualifying position, qualifying time and race deficits are the largest of any teammate except for Liam Lawson in that seat in the first two rounds of the season.
Of course we also know that Red Bull Racing has serious car problems. Tsunoda isn’t the first good driver to thoroughly underwhelm alongside Verstappen — just ask Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, Sergio Pérez and Lawson.
But even if the above data points aren’t representative of Tsunoda’s ability — he scored more points in a slower car last season — thy are immutable. These are the results he’s delivering in a car Verstappen has driven to the top step twice this season.
There are some signs of improvement, even in what appeared to be a step backwards in the Netherlands, where he qualified half a second slower than Verstappen.
In the race he was more impressive, scoring two points for ninth, his first top-10 finish since May’s Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix.
He did so in tense circumstances.
His strategy was undermined twice by the timing of safety cars, dropping him further and further into the pack.
In the final stint of the race he was hampered by a throttle problem that meant his right pedal was largely unresponsive until pressed beyond 40 per cent.
The problem was later revealed to be down to the car not being switched to the right engine mode during his final pit stop. It’s unclear whether it was caused by the car or the driver.
‘Most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen!’ | 01:14
Regardless, Tsunoda performed well under pressure to score with a performance he doubted he would have been capable of in previous seasons.
“It feels like everything gave me a lot of challenges — almost too much,” he said afterwards.
“The last stint, even though I was out of position and still out of the points, I got some big issue that normally, probably in the first few years [of his career] I would have not given up but would have lost the confidence to drive fast.
“But I stayed focused, and in the end I got P9, which makes me really happy. Even in those circumstances I was able to overtake a couple of cars, which wasn’t easy.
“Normally P9 is not really special, but especially after seven races and with the car in such a situation, I think that was something special for me and gives me some confidence.”
But curiously he also suggested it wasn’t down to him gelling better with the car.
He said his first score in four months had more to do with getting his hands on the same upgrades as Verstappen for the first time since May.
“I think the last especially three races the team pushed me a lot, gave me a lot of things to give me performance in the car, and that helps a lot,” he said. “I didn’t do anything.
“So I massively appreciate the team for having massive support. It’s time for me to adapt as much as possible and score points and be as close as possible with Max.
“It’s just something I needed a lot. It felt like a big challenge, [but] it used to be kind of normal, being in this kind of position.
“I’ll just keep pushing.”
If Tsunoda is right and his underperformances have been almost entirely down to the car, then the points should flow in the next five races to meet his deadline.
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BUT HAS MARKO ALREADY MADE UP HIS MIND?
That assumes, however, that he’s still in the fight.
While Marko backed Tsunoda’s elevation to Red Bull Racing, the Austrian powerbroker is only an ally so long as a driver can return results.
Otherwise in Marko’s world there’s always a newer, shinier object to fascinate — and Hadjar’s podium is sparkling brilliantly.
“He had to fight pretty hard for it, you know,” Marko told Autosport. “I saw Russell attack him several times, and the other driver was Leclerc — they really tried, but he stayed calm. He didn’t do anything wrong.
“So, yeah, there’s a good one coming.”
Marko appeared to have no concern that Tsunoda had also looked impressive before taking up the Red Bull Racing drive.
“Isack is different,” he said. “He had these engine problems on Friday. He completely missed one session and missed 50 per cent of the other one or so. But he wasn’t worried. He said, ‘I have the speed, I will qualify in the top five’.”
One result shouldn’t case the die, but Hadar’s performance in the Netherlands ticked so many of the Red Bull program’s boxes.
Marko loves a driver who demonstrates supreme mental — check.
He loves a driver with immense one-lap speed — check.
And he loves a headline-grabbing, head-turning result — check.
These were the criteria that got Nyck de Vries his shock AlphaTauri drive after a single good weekend as a substitute driver for Williams.
And there have been countless drivers to have rotated through Red Bull program on F1’s periphery that have met similar requirements.
Hadjar is looking like exactly the sort of driver Red Bull Racing would promote to the senior team.
Regardless of the lessons of history, that might be enough to make the change.
There are some other factors that should be considered.
The first is that next year’s all-new rules could finally give Red Bull Racing a chance to design a car drivable by more than just Verstappen. Having already invested in Tsunoda for years, if the Japanese driver can show at least something, it could be considered prudent to at least see what he can do starting from scratch.
There’s al the matter of Verstappen’s contract, which is said to have even more favourable escape clauses next year. If Red Bull’s first in-house engine disappoints, you can be sure he’ll have no shortage of suitors among the better performing teams.
Would it be wise to burn through another driver with that possibility on the horizon?
But irrespective of these questions, the ultimate deciding factor in Formula 1 is performance.
The longer Tsunoda struggles to score, the less tenable his position becomes regardless of the extenuating circumstances.
Perhaps the Sunday at the Dutch Grand Prix really was a turning point in his season.
He’d better hope it was.