Hadjar wants the Verstappen litmus test. Coulthard: careful what you wish for
Isack Hadjar is saying the quiet part out loud: he wants Max Verstappen in equal machinery, and he wants the verdict now.
The Racing Bulls rookie has been the breakout story of 2025 on pure performance, converting a punchy debut campaign into a maiden F1 podium at Zandvoort and forcing his way into the heart of Red Bull’s 2026 plans. In the paddock whisper game, he’s the name most frequently linked with the seat alongside Verstappen when the new regulations land.
“I just wanna test myself and see how good I am,” Hadjar told Channel 4. “So now you’re telling me that I get the opportunity to drive alongside the best driver in the world in the same machinery. This fires me up.”
You can’t fault the appetite. But David Coulthard’s advice to the 20-year-old is to keep his feet where the asphalt is.
“He’s certainly doing everything right in terms of getting his first opportunity in Formula One and showing, when an opportunity is there, to stand out,” the former Red Bull driver said. “But many drivers can look good with a certain amount of freedom and lack of pressure. Once you put them in the pressure of expectation, some of them don’t shine. That’s what we don’t know right now.”
It’s a familiar warning from inside the Red Bull orbit: the senior team is a different sport. Racing Bulls is a development ground with upside; Red Bull is a win-now machine built around Verstappen’s relentless standard and the expectation that Sunday afternoons end with trophies, or at the very least, damage limitation.
That backdrop looms larger than ever as F1 heads toward 2026, when fresh chassis and power unit rules will reset the pecking order and give teams license to be bold with driver choices. Paddock chatter suggests Hadjar is front of the Red Bull queue, with Liam Lawson tipped to keep anchoring Racing Bulls and Yuki Tsunoda’s future uncertain. None of that is official, but you don’t need to be a strategist to see which way the wind is blowing.
Hadjar’s case is obvious. He’s quick on Saturdays, clean on Sundays and, crucially, adaptable. After the early-season sting of his rain-soaked formation-lap crash in Melbourne — “embarrassing,” said Helmut Marko; “embarrassing,” admitted Hadjar — he quietly stitched together the kind of error-free run that gets senior eyes twitching on the pit wall. Zandvoort was the headline, but the real story is how few wheels he’s put wrong since Australia.
“I think it’s part of my story, the way I joined Formula One,” he reflected. “It happened. Now I just gotta bounce back and show what I’m made of.” He has.
None of that guarantees success in red and blue. Being Max’s teammate is the toughest job in modern F1, and it’s not just about raw pace. It’s the weight of Fridays when development parts arrive with a stopwatch attached; the scrutiny that turns every sector delta into a think piece; the cold reality that good days are measured against one of the sport’s generational benchmarks. Several talented drivers have been swallowed by that context.
Hadjar, to his credit, isn’t shying away. “To fight the best in the world… facing Max in the same car is the best way to find out,” he said. That’s the right instinct. It’s also the point Coulthard is circling: the test isn’t just how fast you are, it’s how you live with the gap when it inevitably appears on a circuit you don’t know or a wind window you don’t like, and how you keep the next lap clean anyway.
Red Bull, meanwhile, has its own calculus. With the team’s championship charge leaning heavily on Verstappen again this year, the second seat has to bring dependable points, a steady hand on damage days and, ideally, enough qualifying bite to give the lead car some strategic air cover. Hadjar’s recent form suggests he could bring that blend. Whether he can do it inside the senior team’s pressure cooker is the experiment 2026 is threatening to run.
For now, the rookie’s made himself impossible to ignore — and that’s half the battle. If the call comes, the real audition starts the moment he pulls the belts tight next to Verstappen. That’s the summit he’s asking for. And in this business, you don’t get many chances to climb it.
