HOW’S THAT HADJAR?
Image: Isack Hadjar (Photo credit: Red Bull content pool // Getty Images)
For years, the second Red Bull seat has been judged against one impossible standard: Max Verstappen at full flight.
That is precisely what swallowed so many drivers before Isack Hadjar. It was never just the pressure of driving for Red Bull. It was the pressure of being compared, every single weekend, to a Verstappen who was usually out front, extracting miracles from a car built around his strengths.
Hadjar has arrived in a different Red Bull era.
The RB car has not always been the weapon Red Bull would want it to be, and that has changed the temperature around the second seat. Max has had to fight the car as much as the field, and in doing so, the spotlight has not fallen as brutally on Hadjar.
Instead of being framed immediately as another teammate failing to keep up with Verstappen, Hadjar has been allowed to settle, learn and build rhythm inside one of the toughest garages in Formula 1. He has not had to explain a 40-second gap to a dominant Max every Sunday. He has not become the easy headline.
As Red Bull begins to find more performance, that grace period may not last forever. But Hadjar has used it well. He looks calmer than many before him, less consumed by the mythology of the seat and more focused on growing into it.
What about the curse of the second Red Bull seat, then?
Maybe, for once, Red Bull’s problems have given its second driver the room to survive.
