Motorsport Week takes a look at Isack Hadjar – the man replacing Red Bull-bound Liam Lawson at Racing Bulls in the 2025 Formula 1 World Championship.
Hadjar began single-seater racing at age 14, competing firstly in the French F4 Championship, winning four races across two seasons.
In 2021, he switched to the F3 Asian Championship, finishing sixth in the Drivers’ standings, despite not completing the year.
He balanced this with the FRECA series, alongside fellow F2 alumni Paul Aron, Franco Colapinto and Zane Maloney, in which he finished fifth with two wins.
In June of that year, Hadjar’s consistent showings in all competitions saw him named a Red Bull Junior Team member.
2022 would see him start with another sting in the F3 Asian series, again winning two races, on his way to third place in the final standings.
In the same year, he made his FIA Formula 3 bow with Hitech, for whom he had already been racing in Asia. Things got off to the perfect start, taking victory in the Bahrain Sprint, the first race of the championship.
He took further wins at Silverstone and Spielberg, eventually finishing fourth in the title race. The impressive showing saw him promoted within Hitech to a Formula 2 seat for 2023.
His first F2 year was perhaps his hardest in racing to date, amassing a mere 55 points, and finishing 14th in the standings, with only one podium finish. A highlight of the year was being given the chance to take the wheel of an F1 car for the first time – an AlphaTauri – in FP1 at the Mexico City Grand Prix. He then followed this up with another at Abu Dhabi, this time for the full Red Bull team.
F2 breakthrough precedes F1 bow
For 2024, Hadjar would join Campos Racing for his second season in F2, and despite one non-points finish and two DNFS in the first four races, an upturn quickly followed.
Feature wins at Melbourne and Imola, followed by some consistent points finishes, saw him catapulted into title contention, backed up by another win, this time in the Silverstone Feature.
As the season progressed, the battle for the title would ultimately come down between Hadjar and Gabriel Bortoleto, who was by now confirmed as an F1 driver himself, leaving McLaren’s Driver Development Programme to join Sauber.
The penultimate weekend in Lusail brought drama, as Hadjar finished third on the road in the Feature, but second overall, as Bortoleto was the victim of a five-second time penalty, finishing behind, to reduce the Brazilian’s lead to just half a point going into the final rounds in Abu Dhabi.
The Sprint saw Bortoleto finish ahead, but all was not lost, that was at least until lights out in the Feature.
Hadjar failed to get away from the grid initially, and spent the entire race a lap down, ensuring it would be Bortoleto who took the title.
The toll of the gruelling F2 season was surely heightened by Hadjar’s name being murmured in the background for a potential F1 seat, particularly if Lawson was to take the Red Bull seat should it be vacated by Sergio Perez.
Now officially announced, F1 sees its fourth F2 graduate to take the grid next year.
READ MORE – Red Bull junior Isack Hadjar promoted to Racing Bulls F1 2025 seat
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