Hadjar and the memory of joining the Red Bull Junior Team: “I couldn’t believe it”

The debut in Red Bull The first three races of the 2026 season ended with unexpected results for Red Bull, in a clear competitiveness crisis as well as for the four-time world champion Max Verstappen. A delicate moment for the Milton Keynes team, where Isack Hadjar made his debut this year, who still managed to overtake the four-time Dutch world champion in the standings. No one before him had ever achieved similar goals in the internal challenge with Verstappen, all in his second year in F1 after his experience in Racing Bulls in 2025. Entry into the Junior Team Yet, the French-Algerian driver’s career in the preparatory categories was not at all simple, with few victories collected between the French and United Arab Emirates F4 championships. Despite this, in 2021, Hadjar received an offer from Helmut Marko to join the Red Bull Junior Team, with the offer arousing great emotions in him and his parents: “It was a period of my career in which I was uncertain. I didn’t have a precise direction, I didn’t know what I was going to do – he told the official F1 website – even just financing the whole year was difficult, so we didn’t even know if we would be able to finish it. It was a complicated situation. So, the relief after signing with Red Bull it arrived. It was something that took them a while to accept. Even when I got the helmet and the Red Bull colours, I still couldn’t believe it.” Hadjar officially entered the Red Bull academy in 2022, but the first contact with Marko occurred in 2021, the year in which the Frenchman won the race in Monaco in the European Formula Regional championship: “On the day of the victory I had a meeting with him in the evening and I was obviously very impressed – he recalled – for me Formula 1 has never been unattainable, it has always been my goal, but it still remains the pinnacle. And meeting these people in person, talking with him, being told: ‘Yes, I’ll send you a contract. You sign or you don’t, okay?’ It was all very straightforward. It was really impressive, but more than that, it was a relief.”

Automobile Magazine – F1 English News
2026-04-30 22:00:00