Isack Hadjar has been designated as Max Verstappen’s “whipping boy” at Red Bull by ex-Formula 1 Champion Damon Hill going into the 2026 season.
Hadjar will be the fourth different driver to pair up with Verstappen at Red Bull in the last five years.
After a brilliant rookie season for the French-Algerian driver with sister outfit Racing Bulls, that also saw him bag a maiden F1 podium at Zandvoort, the Milton-Keynes-based squad decided to hand him a promotion over incumbent Yuki Tsunoda.
Tsunoda, who had himself been drafted into the second RB21 seat after Liam Lawson’s disastrous start to the 2025 campaign, as Sergio Perez’s replacement, hadn’t fared all too well alongside the Dutchman.
Despite showcasing an ability to more or less lap within three-tenths of Verstappen since the summer break, the team opted to hand Hadjar a shot with the Japanese driver being relegated to a reserve driver role for the upcoming 2026 season.
That said, while the 21-year-old comes into the team buoyed by his exploits last year, he has been handed a brutal reality check by former World Champion Hill.
“He’s going to be the whipping boy for the team, isn’t he?,” he said on the Stay on Track podcast.
Isack Hadjar warned not to ‘upset the apple cart’ at Red Bull
The second Red Bull seat has become a revolving door for drivers since Daniel Ricciardo left the team at the end of the 2018 season.
Since then, the likes of Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, Perez, Lawson and Tsunoda have all succumbed to the task of matching up to Verstappen.
Theories having been floating around the paddock about how the Red Bull cars are more suited to Verstappen’s driving style – exacerbating the second drivers’ plight.
However, Hill, who knows a thing or two about inter-team dynamics and favouritism after spending stints alongside Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, and Nigel Mansell at Williams, believes it’s more to do with the fact that the team is itself built around the four-time World Champion.
“The best he can do is a pat on the head from Max and the team going ‘you did all you could’,” Hill added.
“He’s going to have to accept that in that team, Max rules and he’s there as a supporting act. It’s whether you can get your head around that as a competitor – because would Max do that? No.”
Would this be something Hadjar will accept? The Briton thinks it is going to be a hard compromise. Having said that, whatever he chooses to do at Red Bull will dictate how his own title credentials build up, either at the team or elsewhere.
“Are you World Championship material if you can accept being number two?,” he examined.
“It has to be seen as if he’s going to go and do this job, Red Bull, he’s going to have to say ‘I’m here to strengthen myself to learn in order to be number one at some point somewhere’.
“But how do you, how do you communicate that without upsetting the apple cart?”
READ MORE – Ex-F1 driver lambasts Sergio Perez for recent Red Bull remarks
Discussion about this post