Hadjar's Baku podium on return from injury draws praise from Red Bull for pace and teamwork

Isack Hadjar delivered what Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies described as his best Formula 1 race to date at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku, finishing on the podium in his first appearance since missing three race weekends with a wrist injury. The 20-year-old qualified fourth and ran a faultless race around one of the calendar’s most unforgiving street circuits to secure his third F1 podium overall.

“I think it was outstanding what Isack has produced this weekend, really outstanding,” Mekies said after the race. “At first, the most important thing is that straight away he felt good in the car, no pain. It means that every time we met together in the last few weeks and we said we will wait for Isack to come back at 100% because that’s the priority, well, that’s what happened.”

Hadjar had signalled during practice that his wrist would not be a limiting factor, and he backed that up by building his pace methodically across each session. Mekies noted that the Baku City Circuit — with its narrow walls, minimal run-off, and technical old-town section — was far from the ideal venue for a comeback drive.

“Even without pain, this is not an easy track to come back to because there is no margin for error,” Mekies said. “He has been building up his rhythm, session after session, very calmly, and with a lot of positive energy. The sort of race pace that he has shown on the medium and on the soft is something we had not seen before. On the weekend of his return, he has raised the bar again.”

Beyond raw speed, it was Hadjar’s radio discipline and teamwork with Max Verstappen that particularly caught Red Bull’s attention. The team asked Hadjar to yield his position to the four-time world champion during the first stint, and even when Verstappen subsequently struggled with Pirelli’s medium compound, Hadjar managed his own tyres patiently rather than pushing for personal gain.

“He also raced extremely cleverly with Max, very disciplined with his tyres,” Mekies added. “It allowed us to have very, very strong teamwork between the two of them and between the pitwall.”

Mekies has consistently pointed to Hadjar’s incremental improvement as a defining characteristic of his debut season, and the Baku result reinforces that trajectory. With the podium secured and his fitness concerns behind him, Hadjar heads into the next round having firmly re-established himself as a genuine contributor to Red Bull’s constructors’ campaign.