Isack Hadjar will need more than just the right attitude to succeed where his five predecessors failed, in being a fully competitive team-mate and adversary to Max Verstappen within Red Bull’s main Formula 1 team.<\/p>\n
But a keen awareness of the scope of the challenge he will face as a sophomore F1 driver against “the best driver in the world” – and the willingness to publicly express this awareness without sugarcoating it in familiar, empty PR language – is a promising sign for Red Bull’s latest gamble to finally give it a balanced Red Bull Racing line-up.<\/p>\n
Speaking in Abu Dhabi to a select group of media following the announcement he will replace Yuki Tsunoda as Verstappen’s team-mate in 2026, Hadjar refuted the suggestion that the target would be to beat Verstappen – at least initially.<\/p>\n
“If anything the goal is to accept that I’m going to be slower [for] the first months,” he acknowledged bluntly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“And I think that if you go into that mindset you accept already it’s going to be very tough. Looking at the data and seeing things you can’t achieve yet, it’s going to be very frustrating.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“If you know [this in advance], then you’re more prepared.”<\/p>\n
Going into a season like this, Hadjar admitted, is something that “never happened to me in my life”.<\/p>\n
And he does not see it as defeatist. In fact, he believes Verstappen’s previous team-mates may have suffered from inflated expectations.<\/p>\n
“I think they think the opposite. Everyone thinks they are special. And you come in, you’re like, ‘he’s a human, I’m going to beat him’. And then you get stomped on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Then, snowball effect starts, you know?\u00a0<\/p>\n
“And we’re talking about the best driver on the grid, so the chance that I’m slower at the start of the year is very high. So, might as well accept it now and just work towards getting there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Yeah. Of course, I’m hoping to be as fast as him. I’m hoping, but realistically, there’s very few chances.”<\/p>\n
Verstappen is 28-1 against Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda as his team-mates in F1 qualifying – sprint and grand prix – this year. He was 29-1 against Sergio Perez the year before.<\/p>\n
Since Daniel Ricciardo’s departure at the end of 2018, Verstappen is responsible for 2749.5 of Red Bull’s 3955.5 points, a rate of 69.5%, though he’s at a much more imposing 93% this year specifically.<\/p>\n
So an admission that could be attributed as a sign of weakness for Hadjar is, in fact, just healthy pragmatism and a necessary grounding of expectations, with no downside.<\/p>\n
If he is wrong – if he is somehow at Verstappen’s level from the outset, like Daniel Ricciardo was with Sebastian Vettel in 2014 but even more shocking than that – then that’s only a plus, and given he’s 21, there will be time enough to capitalise down the line.<\/p>\n
The regulations reset does mean a flicker of early hope for Hadjar, given the 2026 car will be all-new for both him and Verstappen, but it’s not something he puts too much weight in.<\/p>\n
“If I was to jump in, if there was another year of this regulation, no way [I can beat him right away]. But because you never know, maybe the way you have to drive this car is suiting me perfectly…<\/p>\n
“But at the same time, it’s Max Verstappen. He doesn’t have a driving style. He adapts to what he’s given and that’s what makes his strengths. So he’s going to be as good in next year’s cars as he is on this year’s car and as he was the year before. He’s constantly adapting, too.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Isack Hadjar will need more than just the right attitude to succeed where his five predecessors failed, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-327292","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}