Isack Hadjar’s Zandvoort podium didn’t just light up a grey Dutch afternoon — it blew open Red Bull’s 2026 driver question.
Racing Bulls CEO Peter Bayer knows exactly what it means when a junior in the Red Bull system starts landing haymakers on Sundays. He’s thrilled, and he’s worried. Thrilled because Hadjar just delivered the first podium for the Faenza team under its current Racing Bulls identity. Worried because there’s very little he can do if the big team across the paddock decides Max Verstappen’s next team‑mate is wearing his colours.
“If Red Bull wants him, we are powerless,” Bayer admitted to Blick after Zandvoort, doubling down on a line he first floated months ago when he joked they’d have to “handcuff” Hadjar to keep him through 2026.
It’s not hard to see why the 20‑year‑old is suddenly everyone’s favourite solution to Red Bull’s second‑seat riddle. He qualified a career‑best P4 at Zandvoort, held off Charles Leclerc and George Russell in the fight behind Verstappen, then picked up third when Lando Norris’s McLaren let go late on. That made Hadjar the youngest Frenchman ever to stand on an F1 podium — and the first Racing Bulls driver to do it since the rebrand.
On a day when Yuki Tsunoda finally snapped a seven‑race barren run with ninth, Hadjar stole the show and most of the headlines. The points tell the same story: Hadjar sits on 37 to Tsunoda’s 12 this season, a swing that’s hard to ignore in a programme where data has always trumped sentiment.
Helmut Marko, never shy about a call-up when he’s seen enough, is deliberately holding fire. The Red Bull motorsport advisor told Sky Deutschland at Zandvoort that the decision on Verstappen’s 2026 partner won’t land until October. The logic is simple: give the candidates more laps, more pressure, more evidence. “Around September or October, we want to have a few more races to observe, and then we’ll make the decisions,” he said.
Hadjar’s case is gathering pace with the kind of momentum that usually moves mountains in Milton Keynes. And he isn’t pretending otherwise.
At Monza, when asked about the next step, he swerved the idea of a mid‑season jump and pointed straight at the 2026 reset. “To be honest, at the start of the year you were asking me if I was ready to jump in the Red Bull this year and the answer is still no because I don’t see the point of doing that right now,” he said. “’26 is a different question. It’s a brand new start for the team, there won’t be this talk about this second car thing because it is a brand new car for everyone. So I think this is actually interesting.”
Translation: if you’re going to take the leap, do it when everyone’s on zero with the new technical rules. Asked if it’s going to happen, he didn’t blink. “It’s obviously something I have in mind and there are nine races left to prove I can keep doing a very good job. I want to try for the best team, and that’s all I want really.”
From Bayer’s side, the preferences are clear: keep the kid, keep building, cash in on the experience through the first year of the 2026 era. But that’s the eternal tension baked into Faenza’s role. Racing Bulls exist to sharpen drivers for Red Bull Racing; when a blade gleams, it usually gets moved upstairs.
The Verstappen seat next door remains the most radioactive chair in the sport, and the usual qualifiers apply. Red Bull won’t be swayed by one fairytale Sunday. But Hadjar’s podium wasn’t a lucky roll of the dice. It followed a clean qualifying, a calm opening stint in traffic and a measured closing phase that left him two seconds behind Verstappen at the flag. That’s the kind of race engineers remember.
Tsunoda, meanwhile, did himself a favour by banking points again, but his season has sagged at the wrong time. With Marko pushing the decision to October, there’s just enough runway for late twists. There’s also the structural question: does Red Bull want a safe set of hands to play wingman in 2026, or a young charger to grow with whatever Adrian Newey’s successors have cooked up? Hadjar looks like the latter.
What’s certain is Bayer can’t lock the doors if the call comes. He knows it, Hadjar knows it, and so does everyone thumbing through the 2026 entry list. From here, the audition rolls on through Monza and beyond. If Hadjar keeps turning Saturdays into Sundays like he did at Zandvoort, the only handcuffs involved will be metaphorical — and they’ll be Red Bull‑blue.
