Isack Hadjar didn’t need a press release or a glossy launch video to announce himself at Red Bull Racing. A single morning in Barcelona did the job well enough.
Formula 1’s first public-ish taste of the 2026 cars came on Monday as the sport began its closed-door ‘Shakedown Week’ at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, the opening act before two further pre-season tests in Bahrain next month. With teams still learning what their brand-new machinery wants from them — and what it absolutely refuses to do — lap times are little more than scene-setting. But even at this stage, who looks comfortable matters.
Hadjar, making his first proper appearance in Red Bull colours, ended the morning session quickest on unofficial timing after putting a 1:18.835 on the board in the RB22. The usual caveats apply: fuel loads, run plans and “don’t read into it” directives are basically the currency of week one. Still, there’s a difference between being quick and looking like you belong, and Red Bull will quietly enjoy that its newest driver didn’t spend his first day simply surviving the programme.
The day itself was unusual even by testing standards, because the pit lane was missing some familiar heavyweights. McLaren and Ferrari — last year’s constructors’ champions and their most obvious challenger, respectively — sat out Monday’s running entirely, while Aston Martin wasn’t present for the opening three days at least. Williams, meanwhile, has already confirmed it will miss all five days in Barcelona.
That left seven of the 11 teams running on day one, and it created a slightly distorted picture of who was doing what. Mercedes, Alpine and Audi were the first to roll out, with Kimi Antonelli, Franco Colapinto and Gabriel Bortoleto leading the early queue at the end of the pit lane.
Antonelli was brisk early doors, topping the initial phase of the morning with an unofficial 1:20.700, before the times began to tumble as the track improved and teams moved through their plans. Hadjar’s 1:18.835 ultimately stood as the morning benchmark.
But if the stopwatch told one story, the red flags told another. The session was halted three times after cars stopped on track — Bortoleto’s Audi, Colapinto’s Alpine and Liam Lawson’s Racing Bulls. Audi later described Bortoleto’s stoppage as a “technical issue” on the R26, the kind of bland-but-useful phrase you hear when a team doesn’t want to start its season answering awkward questions on day one.
After lunch, the rhythm of the day went strange again. Nobody emerged for more than half an hour, the sort of lull that usually means teams are either changing major components, doing systems checks, or waiting for a green light from engineers who don’t like what they’re seeing on the data. When the track finally came alive, driver changes were part of the reset.
Mercedes swapped Antonelli out for George Russell in the W17, while Cadillac split its day too, with Sergio Perez taking over from Valtteri Bottas. For Perez, it doubled as a birthday shift — he turned 36 on Monday — although reports suggested his afternoon was mostly installation work rather than anything resembling a proper push.
Haas, on the other hand, got stuck in. Esteban Ocon improved to a reported 1:23.014 in the afternoon and, more importantly at this stage, piled on the mileage. He’s believed to have completed 154 laps, which is exactly the kind of number team bosses like seeing in week one of a new rules era. You can draw a straight line from “unremarkable but relentless” testing days to points scored when others are still picking up the pieces in the opening races.
By the end of the day, the timing screens had apparently returned to the story that began the morning: Hadjar at the top. Unverified reports claimed he and Russell traded fastest laps late on, with Hadjar ultimately credited with a best of 1:18.159.
Again, it’s early, and everyone in that paddock knows it. But first impressions in Formula 1 have a habit of sticking — and for Hadjar, this one was the right kind. Red Bull’s 2026 project has enough moving parts without needing its new driver to take time to find his feet. On day one in Barcelona, he looked like he already had them under him.
