Red Bull wants “unbelievable” protege “to continue to surprise us” in F1 2026

Red Bull Formula 1 team boss Laurent Mekies wants Isack Hadjar to “continue to surprise” when he partners Max Verstappen in 2026.

The French driver made his F1 debut last season with the Racing Bulls team and impressed across the 24-round calendar.

Isack Hadjar scored his first F1 points three rounds into the 2025 season in Japan with an eighth-place finish and managed a best of sixth at Monaco inside the first half of the campaign.

He took a maiden podium finish at Zandvoort after the summer break and finished 12th overall in the standings, two spots ahead of team-mate Liam Lawson.

Hadjar earned himself a promotion to the main Red Bull team in place of the struggling Yuki Tsunoda, who was 17th in the standings last season.

“Unbelievable” first season for Hadjar praised by Red Bull boss

In recent years, a promotion to Red Bull from its sister team has proven to be a poisoned chalice for drivers, with the likes of Lawson and Tsunoda struggling to replicate solid form from the previous year.

In conversation with the official F1 website, Mekies has moved to temper results expectations, and instead wants Hadjar to “continue to surprise” as he did in 2025.

“Isack has had an unbelievable first season,” Mekies said.

“There is no doubt that in terms of starting point – so where he started in January – the starting point was outstanding.

“Then we are strong believers not only in the raw talent, but also in the ability of the drivers to develop.

“We have seen so many champions developing through the years, doing things that they had not done in the car a few races before.

“We've seen that with Isack this year too. We’ve seen him making stuff in the car that he was not doing three races before.”

He added: “We would like him to continue on that path. We don't see it as a landing point.

“We see it as another start for him to continue to develop, to continue to impress us, to continue to surprise us.

“And you will expect that in the second year. You will expect that in the third year, perhaps in the fourth year. So that's a little bit of the journey for us together.”