Red Bull has spent the better part of a decade trying to solve the same problem: how do you put someone alongside Max Verstappen who can contribute without getting swallowed whole?
At Spa, Isack Hadjar offered the most convincing answer yet — not through a headline-grabbing duel with the world champion, but by playing the sort of team game Red Bull has too rarely been able to rely on in the Verstappen era. The Frenchman’s slipstream in qualifying was worth a chunky 0.4s to Verstappen, transforming what would’ve been sixth on the grid into second. Verstappen turned that track position into a podium, finishing third at the Belgian Grand Prix, and he didn’t have to do it alone.
It’s the kind of detail that tends to get lost once the champagne’s been sprayed: a teammate using their weekend to prop up the overall result, even when their own weekend has already been compromised. Hadjar, after all, was staring down the barrel of a back-of-the-grid start thanks to engine penalties. The easy play in that situation is to keep your head down, protect your own race, and let the other side of the garage fend for itself. Hadjar did the opposite — and then went and produced one of the drives of his career anyway.
Timo Glock, speaking to Sky Deutschland, didn’t mince his words about what that says. “For me, he is one of the men of the year,” Glock said, pointing to the broader context: everyone looks at Verstappen, and most teammates enter the Red Bull orbit already braced for impact. Hadjar’s approach has been notably different — less wide-eyed reverence, more matter-of-fact competitiveness. Glock’s read is that the 2026 newcomer has embraced the assignment rather than feared it, and crucially, he’s backed it up “weekend after weekend”.
That’s what makes Hadjar’s Spa so significant for Red Bull internally. The tow was the obvious contribution, but the race was the real statement. From 21st on the grid to sixth at the flag, Hadjar ran an aggressive sequence early — two pit stops in two laps to swap his hard tyres to mediums and then back to another set of hards — before settling into what effectively became a one-stop. It was an unusual call, the kind that can look either inspired or absurd depending on timing, traffic and neutralisations, and it ended up squarely in the former category.
Team boss Laurent Mekies was unequivocal afterwards, calling it Hadjar’s best race with Red Bull so far. Mekies’ key point wasn’t that this was some random spike; it was that Hadjar’s speed has been edging forward every round, and Spa was simply “another step” — one that was evident from FP1. The strategy, Mekies admitted, was “slightly unusual”, but it opened a door when the Virtual Safety Car timing fell their way and gave Hadjar a chance to beat Lando Norris “fundamentally”. More telling was the claim about underlying pace: Mekies said Hadjar was running “top three pace” on Sunday.
In the narrowest sense, that’s a compliment about one weekend. In the wider sense, it’s exactly the sort of sentence Red Bull hasn’t been able to say often enough about Verstappen’s teammates.
Hadjar’s Red Bull promotion always came with a timeline question. He’d done just one season at Racing Bulls before being elevated for 2026, becoming Verstappen’s third teammate since Sergio Perez left the team 12 months earlier. Hadjar’s own tone at confirmation was respectful — “It’s a fantastic thing, I can’t wait to work with the best and learn from Max” — but respect doesn’t score constructors’ points, and it doesn’t prevent the familiar one-car-team drift that’s haunted Red Bull at various points.
What’s shifted this season is that Hadjar has found a way to be useful even when he can’t directly fight Verstappen. He qualified third in Australia as Verstappen crashed out in Q1, and while Hadjar’s race ended with an engine failure, it was an early flare that the new guy could at least keep the weekend alive when the other car didn’t. Since then, he’s scored in seven of the first 10 grands prix, and at Silverstone he became the first Verstappen teammate to outqualify him on merit. Spa added the other half of the job description: sacrifice something in the short term to strengthen the team’s hand.
There’s a psychological edge to it too. Verstappen doesn’t need protecting, but Red Bull does need a second car that can change outcomes. A tow that flips the front of the grid, a strategy that beats a rival on merit, a recovery drive that hoovers up points from the back — those are the small wins that stop a season from turning into a weekly exercise in damage limitation. Hadjar didn’t take home the fan-voted Driver of the Day (Charles Leclerc did, after finishing second), yet the paddock tends to rate weekends like this in a different currency: how much did you move the needle for your team?
Spa suggests Hadjar is starting to do exactly that. He’s not just surviving next to Verstappen — he’s affecting Red Bull’s Sundays, and occasionally its Saturdays too. For a team that has searched so long for a functional second pillar, that’s a development worth taking seriously.
