Isack Hadjar wants the broken one: Racing Bulls rookie cracks his Dutch GP trophy, and the internet’s new favorite subplot is born
Zandvoort gave us orange smoke, a howling grandstand, and a 20-year-old Frenchman standing on an F1 podium for the first time. It also gave us a snap you could hear over the champagne.
Minutes after finishing third in the Dutch Grand Prix, Isack Hadjar lifted his porcelain P3 trophy for the cameras, set it down, and watched the neck separate from the base. Cue stunned faces, a sheepish grin, and a rookie calmly clutching the top half like it was the last bottle of bubbly on Earth.
The result itself was a proper arrival. Starting fourth, Hadjar soaked up pressure from Charles Leclerc, later George Russell, and sat tight behind Max Verstappen until Lando Norris’ oil leak shuffled him onto the rostrum. Youngest Frenchman ever to feature on a Formula 1 podium, and the first driver to deliver silverware under the Racing Bulls banner. Not bad for a Sunday at the seaside.
The trophy, however, had other ideas. As the Racing Bulls crew and the media mob jostled for the shot, Hadjar raised it a few times, then parked it on the ground. That’s when the neck gave way. The Frenchman, drenched in champagne and Red Bull, kept hold of the top half through the spray to stop it getting worse. It looked like slapstick; it felt like a keepsake instantly gaining mythology.
Within hours, Royal Delft—the craftspeople behind the Dutch GP trophies—stepped in. “Together with the Dutch Grand Prix, we obviously want the winner of spot number 3 to get the trophy he deserves,” the company said in a statement. “We are going to make a new trophy for Hadjar. When we will deliver it is not yet known, but we are working hard on it. The broken trophy stays with Hadjar. It is also a memento of a legendary moment for him.”
A replacement is on the way, a photo from the workshop teased on social, but the man of the moment isn’t fussed about a pristine edition. He wants the original. Specifically, both parts.
“Honestly, man, I don’t even know where is my trophy, my broken trophy,” he laughed in a Sky clip after the race. “I mean, the team is taking care of it I guess, I left it within good hands.” When the interviewer shot back, “both parts?” he didn’t miss. “Yeah, both parts. But I don’t know what’s going on, but I get a new one, I know that. But I want my broken one.”
Then came the line that tells you everything about how drivers think. “The new one, we don’t care about the new one, because it’s not been part of the grand prix history,” he said. “I want the broken one because it’s part of my podium journey. The new one doesn’t smell of alcohol, like the champagne and whatever.”
There’s a charm to it: a kid in only his first season fighting off race winners, making the podium, and coming away with a story nobody else can copy. In a sport that often files the serial numbers off its memories—new chassis, fresh liveries, never look back—Hadjar’s already staking out the sentimental ground. The snapped neck will sit somewhere between an initiation and an icebreaker.
For Racing Bulls, it’s also a marker. The rebranded Faenza outfit has been waiting for a moment to stamp its new name into the headlines, and a hard-won P3 at Zandvoort—with the added virality of a broken trophy—doesn’t exactly hurt the cause. There are easier ways to trend, sure, but few that say “this one mattered” quite as loudly.
As for the rookie, he handled the aftermath with the same composure he showed while keeping Leclerc and Russell at bay. No panic, no drama, just a grin and a very clear request to the team’s logistics department: find the trophy. Both bits.
Somewhere in a factory in Delft, the replacement is curing. Somewhere in Faenza, the original is hopefully being bubble-wrapped, catalogued, and reunited. When Hadjar gets it back, don’t be surprised if the halves stay separated. Sometimes it’s better when the scar shows. It’s proof it really happened. And for the youngest Frenchman to ever climb an F1 podium, that’s the point.
