Telemetry tells the tale: Hadjar hustles to career-best P4 at Zandvoort
Zandvoort can be a bully. It’s narrow, it’s windy, and it eats confidence for breakfast. Which is exactly why Isack Hadjar’s lap for P4 in qualifying felt so sharp: a rookie threading the Racing Bulls VCARB 02 onto the second row, ahead of both Ferraris and both Mercedes, on a Saturday McLaren otherwise owned.
The grid order says McLaren, McLaren, Verstappen, Hadjar. The stopwatch says the kid earned it.
Hadjar’s lap wasn’t about one headline sector; it was a series of small, clean wins. Into Turn 1 he braked later, rolled more minimum speed and set up a tidier launch through the Turn 2-3 sequence than Liam Lawson. By the end of Sector 1, he’d banked just under two-tenths on his teammate — no small feat on one of the shortest laps of the year.
The real statement came at Turn 7. That fast, direction-change right-hander is Zandvoort’s trust fall: lift too much and you park the car; lift too little and you’re a passenger. Hadjar barely breathed off the throttle. Lawson, by comparison, even dabbed the brake. That single corner wrote a big chunk of the three-tenths gap between them in Q3.
Lawson hit back at Turn 10 — a place where the front end loves to wash wide — carrying a stronger apex speed than most. But Hadjar closed the ledger in the final corner with a braver commitment, carrying more speed onto the pit straight and sealing the lap.
Three-tenths between teammates on a lap this short is a lot, but here’s the kicker: it’s only a whisker more than their average qualifying delta this season. Translation: this wasn’t a one-off rocket lap out of nowhere — it’s the form line getting bolder.
There was also the small matter of execution. On a gusty afternoon that kept moving the goalposts, both McLarens failed to improve on their second Q3 runs. Hadjar did. Stitching together all his best sectors in the one lap, he was the only driver in the top 10 to hit his “ideal” combination when it mattered. That’s composure, not luck.
It’s worth underlining what this result is — and isn’t. The Racing Bulls aren’t suddenly the class of the field over a race distance. On Saturdays, the VCARB 02 can be nimble and compliant; on Sundays, it tends to drift toward the midfield fight with Ferrari and Mercedes usually leaning on stronger race pace. That’s the reality Hadjar walks into.
And it starts immediately. P4 puts him on the inside for Turn 1, which at Zandvoort isn’t the gift it sounds like. The cleaner line is to the outside, and the run isn’t long. George Russell will be lurking, the Ferraris won’t hang back, and if anyone gets a better bite off the launch, Hadjar will be fighting elbows-out into Tarzan. He’ll also be doing it with less long-run certainty than most — a Friday FP2 mechanical issue robbed him of meaningful race sims, so his tyre life picture is a touch foggier than he’d like.
Strategy, then, becomes his wingman. Zandvoort rewards track position and punishes hesitation. An early stop to cover an undercut, or riding a Safety Car wave if it appears (and it often does here), could be decisive. The brief for Racing Bulls is simple: convert grid position into points. The brief for Hadjar is trickier: bank the points while proving he can marshal a pack of hungry lions behind him.
There’s also the bigger picture, and it’s impossible to ignore. The Red Bull talent ladder is always moving. Hadjar didn’t just pop a headline lap; he delivered the sort of qualifying that lands on the right desks back in Milton Keynes and Faenza. Calm under pressure, brave in the fast stuff, and tidy when the wind starts pushing you around — that’s the kind of Saturday that sticks.
One great lap doesn’t get you a promotion. A body of work does. But this was an important bookmark in his rookie season: Monaco’s P6 felt artful and opportunistic; Zandvoort’s P4 felt earned and repeatable.
Now comes the hard part. Keep the start clean. Read the wind. Protect the tyres. And, if the race turns scrappy — as it often does at the seaside — keep that Turn 7 bravery in the locker for when it counts.
If he does, the second row won’t be a one-off story. It’ll be chapter one.
