Isack Hadjar admits Red Bull F1 promotion still feels “weird”

Red Bull Formula 1 driver Isack Hadjar is “still pinching” himself after earning a drive with one of the top teams in the championship.

After impressing during his rookie season with Racing Bulls, Hadjar earned the promotion to become four-time champion Max Verstappen’s team-mate. While the Milton Keynes outfit has struggled in recent years to find a team-mate for the Dutchman who is able to extract the same level of performance from the car, Hadjar has had a solid start to the 2026 season.

“Signing is a first step. It’s a big step. But then you’re like, ‘OK, now I know what I have ahead of me. Now I have a path. I have a trajectory. I know it’s all about delivering now. And the chances are low that you make it, but there’s still a chance,'” Hadjar told F1 about signing as a Red Bull junior driver.

“And when I look back on the last few years, what I’ve delivered, the pressure I had to be sat there today, I must say that I’m still pinching myself to realise I’m here working at one of the biggest teams on the grid is weird.”

Discussing how he deals with the pressure of being at a top team, the 21-year-old driver added: “It comes from training. I would say since go-karting, I’ve never had a moment where I knew, ‘OK, this year I have a dominant team, it’s going to be easy, I’m going to go into the upper categories easily’. It’s always been constant pressure, and I always had to prove something.”

Following the first three rounds of the season, Hadjar currently sits 12th in the drivers’ standings with four points. In comparison, Verstappen is ninth with 12 points.

The next race is the Miami Grand Prix from 1-3 May.

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– The Motorsport.com Team

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