Judgement day at Lusail: Hadjar grins while Lawson and Tsunoda wait for Red Bull’s call
Red Bull’s driver roulette reaches its final spin tonight in Qatar, and you can feel it in the paddock looseness — or lack of it. Three names, two teams, one announcement. Isack Hadjar, Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda are all in the frame for Red Bull’s 2026 roster across Red Bull Racing and Racing Bulls. Only one of them looked like he’d already seen the envelope.
“We will announce our line-up immediately after Qatar,” came the line in the build-up to the race, the message repeated on the ground by Helmut Marko: decide after the weekend, reveal next week. No ambiguity, no more hedging. The calls are coming.
Hadjar, the rookie who’s muscled his way into the conversation this season with 51 points and that eye-catching podium at Zandvoort, has the air of a man who knows where he’s sitting next year. In qualifying he stuck it P6 — notably ahead of both of his rival candidates — and then gave the kind of answers that say everything without saying anything.
“So finally, you leave me alone,” he joked when asked if it’d be a relief to get the announcement out of the way. “It’s good to know that it’s going to end soon. I’m very happy, especially with a result like this. It’s just cherry on the cake. I’m just enjoying it.” Told it wouldn’t be “much of a surprise” to him, Hadjar chuckled: “That’s it, I’m not saying anything.” The smile did the rest.
There’s a growing expectation in the paddock that the Frenchman is heading to the big team to partner Max Verstappen from 2026 — a rocket-fuel promotion that would reward a standout rookie campaign in a car that, on paper, had no business sniffing the podiums dominated by the likes of Mercedes and McLaren. Beating your in-house rivals when it counts never hurts either.
On the other side of the garage divide, Tsunoda couldn’t find a grin even after one of his better moments of the year: pipping Verstappen in Sprint qualifying for his first quali “win” over the triple World Champion. When it mattered on Saturday night, it evaporated. Out in Q1, three tenths off Verstappen. That’s not fatal, but timing is everything in this business.
Asked about his future, Tsunoda batted it away. “It’s not decided,” he said, firmly. Still, the prevailing logic has him slipping out of the senior seat if Hadjar is indeed heading up. Then comes the second question: who leads Racing Bulls?
That puts Tsunoda in a straight fight with Lawson, who knows this waiting game by heart. “Honestly, at this point, with the race, it is not really what we’re thinking about too much,” the New Zealander said. “I’ve been in this situation plenty of times now. The decision will come after the weekend. We’ll all back ourselves. There are things you’d do differently in hindsight, but overall, I’m pretty happy.”
Lawson’s case is built on consistency, racecraft and a calm head. Tsunoda’s is built on pace peaks and a body of work inside the Red Bull system. And there’s a twist: strong paddock chatter suggests Red Bull junior Arvid Lindblad is being lined up for one of the Racing Bulls seats, which would make this a literal head-to-head for the other one.
Strip away the noise and the shape of it is simple:
– One seat alongside Verstappen at Red Bull Racing from 2026 — Hadjar looks the clubhouse leader.
– Two Racing Bulls places — potentially one earmarked for youth, leaving Tsunoda and Lawson to argue the toss for the remaining chair.
Red Bull being Red Bull, there’s always the possibility of something left-field. But this hasn’t felt like a smokescreen week. It’s felt like the end of a long audition: Qatar the final scene, the edit already in progress. Hadjar’s pace, Tsunoda’s dip, Lawson’s level tone. You don’t need the timing screens to tell you who’s sleeping best tonight.
Whatever happens after the chequered flag at Lusail, the human side of this is brutal. One of Tsunoda or Lawson could find themselves with a clipboard and a simulator seat for 2026. Or a different kind of opportunity entirely. That’s the Red Bull ecosystem — opportunity at speed, consequences at the same pace.
We’ll know soon enough. And if Hadjar’s keeping a secret, he’s not keeping it very well.
