ZANDVOORT, Netherlands \u2014 Isack Hadjar said he was \u201csuper happy\u201d with a career-best fourth place in\u00a0qualifying\u00a0for Racing Bulls at the\u00a0Dutch Grand Prix\u00a0on Saturday which underlined his status as a candidate to partner Max Verstappen at the main Red Bull team next year.<\/p>\n
The French rookie delivered what Racing Bulls’ head of vehicle performance Guillaume Dezoteux called \u201cthe perfect lap\u201d for the team’s best\u00a0Formula 1\u00a0qualifying result of the year.<\/p>\n
Hadjar was one place behind Verstappen and four ahead of his Racing Bulls teammate Liam Lawson, while the struggling Yuki Tsunoda was only 12th in the second Red Bull.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am super happy, this is an outstanding result for the team,” Hadjar said. “I feel confident for tomorrow, the car is working well, so there\u2019s no reason why our race pace shouldn\u2019t be strong. The race should be straightforward, I\u2019ve got a good view into turn one, and the goal is to maintain position and score good points.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 20-year-old Hadjar’s performance came despite missing valuable practice time when his car broke down on track in Friday’s second session.<\/p>\n
The result comes at a time when Hadjar is widely considered a candidate to partner Verstappen next season if Red Bull decides to replace Tsunoda, who hasn’t scored a point in the last seven GP races.<\/p>\n
Moving up to the main Red Bull team would come with risks.<\/p>\n
Verstappen has been far ahead of a series of teammates and Red Bull’s car tends to favour his driving style, making it hard for other drivers to adapt.<\/p>\n
Red Bull dropped Sergio P\u00e9rez \u2014 who is now\u00a0heading to Cadillac\u00a0for 2026 \u2014 at the end of last year and replaced him with Lawson, only to send the New Zealander back to Racing Bulls after just two races and move up Tsunoda instead.<\/p>\n
Tsunoda has scored 10 points all season, three of those while still with Racing Bulls, compared to Verstappen’s 187. Tsunoda said he was \u201cdisappointed and frustrated in the result\u201d in qualifying but felt confident in the car and believed he could score points Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ZANDVOORT, Netherlands \u2014 Isack Hadjar said he was \u201csuper happy\u201d with a career-best fourth place in\u00a0qualifying\u00a0for Racing Bulls…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-104482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}