\u201cIt was really easy,\u201d he made clear. \u201cI think we discussed it a few times here through the season. He has done a very, very strong first part of the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst with his natural speed, then with the way he has integrated with the team very quickly in the early weeks. He moved to the UK. He was pretty much every other week with us in Milton Keynes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen, not less importantly, the way he has progressed through the races. We have really seen him doing something a bit better pretty much every race weekend. Therefore, it was a very, very easy decision to make.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pushed for more details on Hadjar\u2019s renewal, and whether or not it is a multi-year deal, Mekies added: \u201cIsack has been with Red Bull for a very long time, and it means that, yes, we have a very long-term contract with him as part of him being part of our junior programme, and we have activated our options to secure him for 2027.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later in the press conference, Mekies was asked exactly what he expects to see from Hadjar during his second season at Red Bull \u2013 and if that means getting even closer to Verstappen.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we expect him to do is to continue to progress,\u201d said Mekies. \u201cSo, what we have seen in that first part of the season, not only the technical feedback, not only the maturity, not only the integration, improving his speed as he has been doing\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what we would like him to continue doing through the second part of the year, and through next year. If he does that, yes, of course, he\u2019s going to be very close to Max. Both of these things go together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt was really easy,\u201d he made clear. \u201cI think we discussed it a few times here through the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-611416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}