Isack Hadjar, the third French driver to compete this season, makes his Formula 1 debut this weekend with Racing Bulls. This eager 20-year-old, a fan of Cars and its hero Lightning McQueen, is full of energy and seemingly unstoppable.
Isack Hadjar is restless, impatient, but also passionate. His legs never stop moving to the rhythm of his desire, hiding the fever that consumes him, the fervor that carries him, the impetuosity that has become his trademark.
When the young man (20 years old), who loves the animated film series “Cars” and its main character, Lightning McQueen, with whom one can only find similarities, discovered karting with his father, he knew he would become a Formula 1 driver. It didn’t matter if the path took a detour and led him to judo, from which he emerged a brown belt. It didn’t matter if facts sometimes proved him wrong.
Isack Hadjar: “Excitement, but also fear”
He always has an answer for everything, and his speech is as fast as his reflexes, which saved him in the tunnel at Monaco last year when he, in Formula 2, with an instinctive and incisive turn of the wheel, avoided a slow-moving single-seater at full fifth gear and nearly 250 km/h. The F2 title that eluded him due to a stall at the start of the last race (software issue) didn’t upset him too much either. During the week in Bahrain, he dismissed it with a terse sentence: “I never dreamed of an F2 title,” he said. “But F1…” That says it all.
Isack Hadjar
“I’ve done the rounds in F2. I’m ready for F1!”
The diminutive Hadjar (1.67 m) knows what he wants. He always has and has never hidden it. Last year in Mexico, while he was driving in EL1 for the team that is now his, Racing Bulls, he didn’t hide behind lukewarm platitudes. “I’ve done the rounds in F2,” he confided to us then. “I’m ready for F1!”
Some may mistake his words for arrogance. They would be wrong. It’s simply confidence, the certainty of a champion who always believes in himself. And in whom Red Bull places a lot of hope. Imagine, he won over the notoriously strict Helmut Marko, head of the auto division, four years ago.
That morning, in the streets of Monaco, the FRECA race was taking place (European Championship of Regional Formula, single-seaters more powerful than F4s that allow youngsters to learn about cars after years of karting but slightly less than F3s) and the 16-year-old boy who doesn’t even have a driving license achieved a feat in the city. Having secured pole position the day before, he dominated the most prestigious race on the calendar and this performance did not go unnoticed.
“I had already returned to my hotel when my manager at the time called me and warned me that Helmut Marko wanted to see me,” recalls Hadjar. “At first, I didn’t believe it. And then, I crossed Monaco to go to the Red Bull hotel to meet Dr. Marko.”
“A little Prost,” according to Helmut Marko, head of the Red Bull division
It was on the other side of the Principality, in Fontvieille, in the former establishment of David Coulthard which usually accommodates the Red Bull troops, that the life of this young Parisian would change. “When I walked in, Dr. Marko was talking with (Christian) Horner, Max Verstappen, and Sergio Perez“, he continues, still marked by the encounter. When Hadjar came out, he was no longer the same. The head of the Red Bull division had promised him a contract in his champion breeding program, which Sebastian Vettel and Verstappen, but also Jean-Eric Vergne or Pierre Gasly, had passed through. The contract arrived by mail the following Tuesday.
The meteoric rise of Isack Hadjar, promoted to Racing Bulls F1 driver in 2025
Since then, the formidable Austrian mentor has not let go of Hadjar until he knighted him this winter, supporting him against all odds. Even Horner had to give in, and concede that “the Frenchman was a very fast raw talent”. Marko, for his part, sees in Isack a “little Prost”. A comparison that is not immediately apparent as the agitated youngster seems the polar opposite of the cool and calculating world champion.
Appearances can be deceiving. The young man who once dreamed of meeting his idol Lewis Hamilton has already fulfilled that dream, shaking the Brit’s hand during the official photo taken in Bahrain ten days ago. Now, he can compete with the champion without starry-eyed admiration.
Just ten minutes of conversation with Hadjar reveals his insatiable thirst for knowledge, a need that matches his electric energy that he sometimes needs to channel. For instance, during flights, he doesn’t hesitate to watch the onboard footage of Max Verstappen, Charles Leclerc, or Lewis Hamilton to pick up some tips on preserving his tires. “It’s amazing what you can learn if you look closely,” he says with a mischievous grin.
Laurent Mekies, Head of Racing Bulls
“We don’t temper him. On the contrary, we use this energy to make him do a billion things.”
Guillaume Rocquelin, former engineer of Sebastian Vettel, who became the director of engineering under the Verstappen era and is now in charge of young talents at Milton Keynes, has followed and prepared Hadjar for a long time. “He clearly has a good head on his shoulders,” he says. “He often comes looking for information. And that’s what we ask of them. We are an à la carte service, but we don’t give everything. They have to come to us.”
Hadjar, for his part, never stops. Now it’s Pierre Hamelin, who once looked after Pierre Gasly, that the Frenchman bombards with questions. “I love it,” he chuckled last week. “He’s a hard worker and no matter what I ask, he always has an answer.”
Driven, fiery, insatiable, the pilot is a joy for his boss, another Frenchman. “It’s positive to see a driver arrive in F1 with this level of energy,” says Laurent Mekies. “We don’t temper him. On the contrary, we use this energy to make him do a billion things. Don’t forget, he’s only had one day of F1 testing in his career.”
However, it should be noted that Hadjar’s legs were seen to stop pounding the floor once. After three days of testing in Bahrain, exhausted from endless runs with Racing Bulls, he admitted, “I’m done,” with a smile. “But don’t worry. As soon as the race comes, the energy will be back.”
