Isack Hadjar hasn’t joined Red Bull with any illusions about what the job is. In 2026, the “second seat” alongside Max Verstappen remains the most awkward chair in the paddock: visible, volatile, and rarely forgiving. Damon Hill’s take is blunt even by his standards — the best-case scenario for Hadjar might be a nod of approval from Verstappen and a team debrief that ends with, “You did all you could.”
It sounds harsh, but it’s also a pretty accurate summary of the political reality inside that garage. Verstappen is not merely the reference point; he’s the axis. The car, the weekends, the priorities — everything naturally tilts towards the four-time world champion because that’s where Red Bull’s certainty lives. And when previous incumbents like Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda struggled to convince in 2025, it only reinforced how quickly Red Bull will move when it feels the second car isn’t helping the bigger picture.
Hadjar, at least, arrives with momentum and a reputation that plays well in Milton Keynes. On the Stay on Track podcast, Hill argued that the Frenchman has “earned his position”, while Johnny Herbert pointed to what he saw as Hadjar’s defining trait in 2025: consistency. That’s not a glamorous word in Formula 1, but for this particular role it’s almost the whole brief. Red Bull doesn’t need theatre from its second driver. It needs someone who can routinely be where the strategy requires, score what’s available, and feed the engineers the kind of clean information that turns a difficult Friday into a workable Sunday.
Herbert went further, praising Hadjar’s work ethic and the sense that he could articulate what the car was doing — not just complain about it. The suggestion was that Hadjar wasn’t simply hanging on and having the occasional bright moment as a rookie at Racing Bulls; he was contributing in a way that helped the team “produce what he was producing on the race track”. That matters more now than ever, because once you’re on the other side of the Red Bull campus, you’re no longer judged on flashes. You’re judged on whether you’re useful to the machine.
Hill’s read on Hadjar is interesting for a different reason: personality. There’s an implication here that Red Bull might be getting a character as well as a driver — expressive, engaged, not a shrinking violet. Hill framed it as someone teams enjoy working with: not “a quiet little mouse”, but also not abusive. Some radio messages might’ve been “fruity”, Hill said, but the underlying energy can be infectious when it’s going well. That sort of presence can buy a driver a bit of internal credit, especially at Red Bull where the pressure can flatten drivers into silence.
But none of that changes the central tension: how does a competitor with genuine ambition survive a role that, by design, limits him?
Hill put it in terms that will make plenty of drivers wince. Hadjar, he suggested, is “sort of going to be the whipping boy”, and the top rung of success could be a pat on the head from Verstappen. Not a contract extension, not equality, not the freedom to build a title campaign — just acknowledgement that he fulfilled the assignment.
What makes this dynamic so tricky is that it isn’t only about pace. It’s about psychology and signalling. Red Bull wants a compliant killer: fast enough to matter, smart enough to play strategy, and emotionally disciplined enough not to drag the team into an internal war. Drivers, meanwhile, are built on the belief that they should be the priority. Hill’s question cuts right through the PR: if you can accept being number two, what does that say about your own championship material?
And yet, that’s precisely the compromise Hadjar will have to make — at least initially — if he wants this move to become something bigger than a year or two of survival. Hill’s advice, essentially, is to frame it as an apprenticeship with intent: strengthen yourself, learn, and aim to be number one “at some point somewhere”. The sting is in the final line — how do you communicate that without upsetting the apple cart?
Herbert’s answer was more practical. Can Hadjar do it? Yes. Does he have to play the right game? Also yes — and probably not just for one season. This is a multi-year tightrope, where one wrong comment, one ill-judged radio burst, or one unnecessary on-track moment can turn a promising promotion into the next cautionary tale.
Hadjar, for his part, has already shown signs of understanding what he’s walked into. He’s arrived accepting Verstappen’s superiority, and acknowledging it’s going to be “very frustrating” early on. That’s not surrender; it’s a realistic reading of the landscape. The drivers who implode in that seat tend to do so because they fight the reality rather than work around it.
The irony is that embracing the supporting role can be the quickest route to escaping it. If Hadjar can bank points, avoid the spirals that consumed others, and become an asset rather than a storyline, he gives Red Bull what it actually craves: calm in the second car. And from there, options open up — maybe not at Red Bull, maybe not immediately, but in a paddock that always keeps an eye on who’s delivering under the harshest terms.
For now, though, Hill’s “pat on the head” line will linger because it captures the true measure of the task. At Red Bull alongside Verstappen, success isn’t defined by beating your team-mate. It’s defined by lasting long enough — and performing well enough — that your own career remains yours to shape.
