Opinion

Who slept best last night: Isack Hadjar

Isack Hadjar’s Zandvoort podium was a truly standout performance – something that’s not going to miss Helmut Marko’s eye

Isack Hadjar isn’t your typical Formula 1 driver. He’ll come to the media straight after a session – qualifying or race – when he hasn’t really extracted the maximum, and there’ll be no excuses. He’d give very short answers. He’ll look straight at whoever is asking a question and say something really harsh about himself – to the point where some of these short meetings with a handful of journalists end up with them trying to give him reasons to cheer up.

“You are the only driver not to have been knocked out in Q1 this year. It’s not bad, is it? Something to smile about, at least,” someone pointed out to him on Saturday in Hungary, minutes after he qualified 10th. “Yeah,” Hadjar replied – and added nothing more. Even a reminder that reaching Q3 is still impressive for a rookie didn’t lift him.

“I’m behind my team-mate,” he said, and didn’t feel the need to elaborate.

But he’s always been like that.

“The first time I met him was actually in Zandvoort,” recalled Jeremy Satis, a former French journalist who is now part of The Grid management agency, which Hadjar is signed with, as we chatted on Sunday night after Isack’s first F1 podium. “He was in French F4 — and he hadn’t done a good job in the race. I remember asking his coach if I could interview him because I wanted to do a feature on his story — and his coach said, ‘Maybe just wait an hour, because he’s mad at himself.’

“And Isack was walking back and forth, shouting at himself: ‘How can I race like this?’ ‘All the sacrifice my parents are making…’ He just kept shouting. And I can tell you – now that I’m on the management side – 90% of kids just say, ‘It’s the car,’ ‘It’s the conditions,’ and so on. But he put everything on himself.”

Isack Hadjar, Racing Bulls

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Formula 1 via Getty Images

He was probably a bit fortunate to get that F1 seat this year — grabbing what looked like an outside chance thanks to Sergio Perez’s struggles at the end of last season. And it also didn’t really feel like Red Bull was particularly keen to promote him.

Impressions of him in his junior years varied – some saw him as too arrogant, others too naïve – because he kept insisting in interviews that he’d make it to F1 even when things weren’t going well. He was fiery on the radio too, which gained traction on social media.

And even when he finally got to F1, it sometimes felt like he was a bit out of place in the paddock. Dress him in something other than team kit, and he could pass for another kid asking drivers for selfies – a feeling only reinforced when you hear him talk about Lewis Hamilton. And then there was Melbourne, of course.

It all adds up to a striking contrast in his character: living his childhood dream doesn’t make him feel like he’s “made it” – he keeps demanding more from himself.

For him, not reaching F1 was never an option. That thought, people say, was instilled by the architect of his career – his mother, Randa, always by his side. Hadjar never really needed Helmut Marko to call him at 6am after a bad race – he would already be telling himself everything Marko would have said.

With that unshakeable belief he’d make it to F1, there was never really another option.

Isack Hadjar, Racing Bulls, Yassine Hadjar with Randa Hadjar

Photo by: Joe Portlock / LAT Images via Getty Images

“I remember driving with him when he was in Formula 3 with Hitech, when he wasn’t even fighting for the title yet,” Satis laughed. “And he kept saying, ‘When I will be in F1… when I will be in F1…’ So I asked, ‘Do you say that because it sounds cool or what is it?’ And he said, ‘No, man, I have no choice. I will be in F1.’

“And I saw him say it the same way in front of important people who were about to become sponsors. You know, all drivers say that. But most don’t really believe it. With him, you could tell he was convinced.”

Zandvoort probably settled the debate about who’s been the most impressive rookie of 2025. Scoring a podium with Racing Bulls isn’t the same as doing it with Mercedes. And in F1 – especially for rookies – standout performances matter first, consistency second.

Hadjar’s season hasn’t been perfect. He had scored just a single point since Spain and let Liam Lawson catch up in the standings by the summer break. He was quick, but didn’t put everything together. Ask him, and he’ll probably give you the full list of what he’s done wrong. But that won’t define his rookie year. The Zandvoort podium will. Because that’s what shows potential.

Any way you look at it, it was impressive: an “out of nowhere” lap in Q3 that put him P4 on the grid, holding off Ferraris and Mercedes in the opening laps, surviving three restarts, and keeping it together until the final lap – and spending almost the entire race just behind Max Verstappen.

That’s exactly what Marko values. The Austrian doctor loves to sign drivers after striking performances, even one-offs – cynics will probably say he loves it just as much as sacking them. That’s how it was with Hadjar himself, after his FRECA win in Monaco in 2021. Marko just called him at his hotel to inform him he’d send a contract.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, Isack Hadjar, Racing Bulls

Photo by: Kym Illman / Getty Images

With Marko’s eye for headline results, you can’t help but think Hadjar’s Zandvoort performance now puts him on pole position for the second Red Bull seat in the near future – especially with Yuki Tsunoda’s struggles continuing. To match that kind of performance will be very, very difficult for the Japanese.

Whether that would be the best move for Hadjar himself remains to be seen – the seat alongside Verstappen is one of the hottest in F1, after all. But that’s a question for another day…