BETTER THAN RB? WHY ISACK HADJAR FEELS MORE COMFORTABLE IN THE SENIOR RED BULL GARAGE
F1 news: Isack Hadjar speaks. Get the report on his transition to the senior team and why the 2026 rules suit his driving style.
The young Frenchman kept things pretty quiet over the winter, but early on, you can tell he’s settling in well inside one of Formula 1’s most high-pressure garages.
“I’m someone who really enjoys hard work, so I feel more comfortable here,” Hadjar said. “Honestly, I’m really happy working with people this committed to winning. I’m glad to be here. I feel lucky.”
He says everything’s running smoothly.
Hadjar even dropped a hint that he feels more at home at Red Bull than he did with Racing Bulls.
Most importantly, he says his relationship with reigning champ Max Verstappen is off to a good start.
“Max doesn’t hide anything,” he told Auto Hebdo. “He shares all the data and answers every question I have. And since he’s always so fast, I can actually compare our data.”
He also pointed out that Verstappen’s feedback always matches what shows up in the telemetry.
“He’s honest,” Hadjar said. “It matters to me that what a driver says lines up with the data. That really helps me improve.”
And it’s not just Hadjar who feels good about the fit. Two of Verstappen’s old teammates, Alexander Albon and Sergio Perez, have both thrown their support behind Hadjar.
“I think Isack’s quick, and the rule changes in 2026 are good for him. "It's a fresh start for everyone,” Albon said. “From what I’ve seen, he looks comfortable in the car. He’s got a lot to learn, especially with Max as his teammate, but I think he’ll do just fine.”
Perez agrees the timing’s right.
“He’s ready for Red Bull,” the Mexican said. “With all these regulation changes, and with his talent, if he keeps his cool this year, he’ll have a long, successful F1 career.”
“Being Max’s teammate at Red Bull, in such a strong team, that’s a huge opportunity.”
Hadjar’s keeping it real about the team’s current pace.
“We’re not the fastest; that’s just the truth,” he admitted. Right now, he puts Red Bull as the fourth-strongest team heading into Melbourne. Even finishing eighth wouldn’t feel like a setback; it’d just be a realistic place to start.
He says Ferrari looks especially strong, with Mercedes and McLaren not far behind.
Still, Hadjar’s staying positive.
“Our reliability is solid, and our race pace looks good,” he said. “At least early in the season, I expect we’ll be more competitive in the races than in qualifying.”
THE 2026 SHIFT: CARLOS SAINZ WARNS THAT F1’S NEW 50:50 POWER SPLIT NEEDS FLEXIBILITY
A new era begins: Discover why Carlos Sainz is urging the FIA to remain open to rule changes before the 2026 Australian Grand Prix.
Williams F1 driver Carlos Sainz wants the FIA and Formula One Management to keep an open mind about the new regulations. He points out that, after some real-world running, there’s a chance they’ll need to tweak a few things.
With pre-season testing in Bahrain wrapped up, every team’s attention is on the first race in Australia, set for March 6-8. The new rules are a big deal this year; they call for a nearly 50:50 split between internal combustion and electric power, along with a pile of other changes. Sainz spoke to Motorsport.com about how tough energy harvesting could get at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne.
“Yeah, Melbourne’s going to be tougher, no doubt,” he said in Bahrain. “But honestly, I can’t say exactly how tough, because I haven’t run the simulator with the new calibrations for Melbourne yet.”
He went on, “My message to FOM and the FIA is pretty simple: at the start of the year, let’s stay open to making changes if it turns out these new rules are a bit over the top when it comes to energy harvesting or deployment during a lap. Some tracks might be fine, maybe even Bahrain, though I’m not fully convinced based on what we’ve seen so far.
“But tracks like Melbourne or Jeddah, where energy demands are higher, we might have to rethink things a bit.
“Honestly, it’s a huge shift for everyone. Nobody really knew how much drag or downforce these new cars would have, or what kind of deployment levels teams could manage. So all I’m asking is that we stay flexible, just in case we need to fine-tune things to keep the racing exciting.
“That’s really my only point. We should stay flexible, not lock ourselves into a set approach to energy management.”
CHASING HISTORY: OSCAR PIASTRI FIGHTS TO END AUSTRALIA’S 46-YEAR WAIT FOR AN F1 TITLE
F1 news: Piastri eyes the crown. Get the report on Alan Jones’s psychological secrets and the battle within the McLaren garage.
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Alan Jones probably wondered if his record as the last Australian Formula 1 world champion was finally under threat when Oscar Piastri took the win at Zandvoort last year. Suddenly, McLaren had a star on their hands. With nine races to go, Piastri pulled 34 points clear of Lando Norris after Norris’s car broke down at the Dutch Grand Prix. Max Verstappen was still hanging back, not looking like much of a threat, at least not yet. Almost no one thought Verstappen would end up ahead of Piastri by the time they got to Abu Dhabi.
Everyone’s been talking about McLaren’s choices between their two drivers and whether Piastri struggles more on low-grip tracks on those weekends where he lost most of his points. But if you look back, Alan Jones had a totally different mindset from the drivers you see on the grid today.
For Piastri to finally close out a title, maybe he needs to steal a page from Jones’s book. When Jones took the championship in 1980, he did things his own way.
Jones once said being a “loner” was his secret in F1. In the Drivers on Drivers book, he got pretty honest about how he kept his distance from everyone else. “I used to keep everyone at arm’s length. I never went out of my way to be mates with any of them,” he said. “I was very much a loner. I don’t know if it was out of fear or giving something away; I don’t know what it was. I’d never go down and lounge around the pool with the others in South Africa, Brazil, or Argentina. I’d just stay in my room. I was self-centred. I was there to do a job, and that was it.”
He even hated staying in the same hotel as the guys he was racing. Sometimes, he’d even change flights if there were too many other drivers on his plane. He just didn’t want to reveal anything, not even a glimpse of his personality. “I wasn’t racing against them as people; I was racing against them as things, as objects,” he said. “You’d spot a black Lotus or a red Ferrari and know who was in it, but it didn’t matter. It was just an object you had to pass.”
Now, Piastri’s situation is pretty different. These days, you can’t really hide from the world if you’re an F1 driver. Even though Piastri’s not the loudest guy on the grid, he’s built a big fanbase with his dry sense of humour; people even compare him to Kimi Raikkonen. Still, the social media era means he can’t be as private as Jones was back in the day. He’s often seen travelling to races with other drivers like George Russell and Alex Albon.
Piastri admitted recently that he’s not sure exactly what he needs to do to become a world champion. Maybe Jones’s old-school advice is the key to helping him make that final step, turning him from a contender into a champion.
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