Hadjar flirts with the big seat, Norris keeps swinging, and Red Bull plays it cool: Wednesday F1 notebook
Isack Hadjar didn’t duck the question. Asked about the idea of lining up alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull, the rising Frenchman smiled and admitted it’s both daunting and irresistible. “It scares me, but it’s also incredibly exciting,” he told Canal+. “Seeing myself team up with Max? Of course! And what a line-up!”
For the avoidance of doubt, there’s no decision yet on Red Bull’s 2026 partner for Verstappen. The paddock can stitch together as many breadcrumbs as it likes — Monza sightings, simulator whispers, you name it — but Milton Keynes hasn’t pressed go. Hadjar’s form and his composure in front of a microphone, though, aren’t hurting his case.
If Red Bull is the jazz club everyone wants to play, the band’s set list is changing fast. The 2026 rules are the conversation under every hospitality awning, with FIA single-seater chief Nikolas Tombazis offering a reminder that the new power unit split — roughly half thermal, half electric — is going to shuffle the deck at first.
“There’s certainly a possibility that, in the early times, they may not get it fully right from the word go, and that they may run in a sub-optimal manner initially,” Tombazis explained. Translation: expect some early winners and head-scratchers. The upsides? Refining energy deployment is “relatively straightforward” once teams get meaningful mileage. That’s cold comfort to the manufacturers trying to thread the needle between battery, MGU-K grunt and straight-line efficiency, but it’s the reality. And with Audi incoming next season and Cadillac lined up for 2028, the stakes around those first swings are sky-high.
Back to the title fight that actually pays out this year. Lando Norris isn’t asking for favours. He doesn’t think he needs an Oscar Piastri DNF to swing the momentum back his way — even if Zandvoort’s mechanical gut-punch left him 31 points adrift and gifted his team-mate daylight. Eight races remain. Norris knows the margins and where McLaren have bled points, and he’s not keen on turning this into a soap opera. Expect a clean push rather than a plea for drama, with a quiet emphasis on managing the kind of adversity that’s tripped them up on Sundays.
As for Red Bull, Monza lit a flare — the first win since Laurent Mekies took the helm. That naturally triggered the “rebirth” chatter, the sort of feel-good narrative that looks great on a thumbnail. The sensible read? Not yet. One result at a low-drag temple doesn’t prove a trend line, and Baku — long straights, mechanical grip demands, walls that don’t blink — will ask very different questions. There’s pace, there’s structure, there’s a new voice on the pit wall, and there’s Verstappen. But anyone calling the power shifted after one Italian afternoon is getting ahead of themselves.
And then there’s Pierre Gasly, who has tethered his future to Alpine through 2028. He was candid about shopping around before committing — standard operating procedure for any driver with options — but the crux of his decision sits inside Enstone and Viry. “I think we’ve got all the ingredients in the team to actually deliver a competitive car from next year’s on,” he told us, “but people have got to believe in it. Same as when you drive. If you have the belief you’re going to make it, you always get those last couple of hundredths and extra performance out of it.”
Belief doesn’t buy lap time by itself, but culture does move the needle. Alpine’s challenge is stitching together a package that lets Gasly cash those last hundredths. The talent and infrastructure aren’t in doubt; the execution has been.
So, as the circus packs for Baku, here’s where we are:
– Hadjar’s star keeps rising, but Red Bull’s 2026 call hasn’t been made. He knows what that seat entails, and he isn’t shying away from it.
– The 2026 hybrid split is going to create early winners and losers. Expect variability; expect quick learners to profit.
– Norris is still talking like a champion-in-waiting, not a scoreboard watcher. No dependence on Piastri’s misfortune — just a demand that McLaren tighten the screws.
– Red Bull’s Monza victory was encouraging, not definitive. Let’s see what the streets of Baku say before writing the next chapter.
– Gasly’s bet on Alpine is equal parts faith and insistence. If the ingredients are there, 2026’s reset could be their moment to plate up something serious.
It’s a long season with a short memory. By Sunday night in Azerbaijan, we’ll either be doubling down on Monza’s hints or grinding them into the Baku asphalt. Either way, the storylines aren’t running out — they’re multiplying.
