- Isack Hadjar fractured his wrist hitting a punching bag in a summer break boxing session, calling it the first injury of his life.
- The Red Bull rookie has missed three straight Grand Prix weekends while Liam Lawson fills in alongside Max Verstappen.
- Red Bull says his recovery is going to plan but will only confirm his Baku return once he clears a simulator test this week.
A Punching Bag Ended a Season Isack Hadjar Had Waited His Whole Career For
Isack Hadjar had never missed a race weekend to injury before this year. Not in karting, not in French Formula 4, not through four wins in Formula 3, not across a rookie Formula 1 season strong enough to earn him a promotion to partner Max Verstappen at Red Bull Racing itself. Then, in the middle of the summer break, a routine boxing training session went wrong. He caught a punching bag at the wrong angle and fractured his wrist, an injury so far outside his experience that he described it to reporters in almost disbelieving terms: “my first injury ever in my whole existence.”
The timing could hardly have been crueler. Hadjar had spent 2025 building a case that he belonged at the sport’s top table, banking 51 of Racing Bulls’ 92 points, taking a maiden podium at Zandvoort, and finishing ahead of eventual teammate Liam Lawson in the standings by a wide enough margin that Red Bull moved him into its flagship seat for 2026. Guenther Steiner, watching from outside the team, called him his rookie of the year for that season, a nod from a paddock veteran who has seen plenty of young drivers come and go without ever building that kind of case. He arrived at his dream drive, and within months of settling into it, an accident that had nothing to do with a race car sidelined him from it.
“Weird to Be on the Bench”
Hadjar has missed the Dutch, Italian, and Spanish Grands Prix, three consecutive weekends that would have given him a run of races to build rhythm alongside Verstappen in only his second season at the sport’s highest level. Instead, he has watched Lawson, the very driver he beat out for the Racing Bulls seat a year ago, climb into his Red Bull car three times in a row. Hadjar did not hide how strange the position felt. “It’s weird to be on the bench,” he said, a phrase that carries extra sting from a driver who has never before had to use it.
The mental side of the layoff has proven just as tricky as the physical recovery. Hadjar has to prepare for a car he is not currently driving, split his attention between rehabilitation and staying race-ready, and do it all without the lap-by-lap feedback loop that keeps a driver sharp. “It’s quite tricky to mentally prepare for what car I’m going to drive,” he admitted, before adding a note of cautious progress: “the more time I drive this, I get more comfortable.” That sentence alone captures the strange middle ground Hadjar has occupied for a month: neither fully sidelined nor fully back, rehearsing race lines and braking points for a seat he cannot yet physically occupy.
An Unlikely Understudy in Yuki Tsunoda
The substitution saga carries its own layer of irony. Yuki Tsunoda, the driver Hadjar effectively replaced when Red Bull promoted him to partner Verstappen for 2026, has spent parts of this stretch covering for Racing Bulls while the team’s own driver pool got reshuffled around Hadjar’s absence. A seat swap chain that started with Hadjar’s rise now runs in the opposite direction, with the driver he leapfrogged stepping back into a Red Bull-family cockpit while the driver who replaced him waits for his wrist to heal. Motorsport has always had a way of circling back on its own storylines, and this one looped back within a single season.
For Red Bull, the calculus has stayed consistent throughout: protect the recovery, do not rush a rookie back into one of the two most scrutinized seats in the sport before he is ready. Team principal Laurent Mekies has repeated that message at each race weekend Hadjar has missed, most recently stating there is “nothing wrong” with his recovery timeline. That patience looks unusual for a team that has, in other seasons, been criticized for churning through its second seat faster than drivers could establish themselves in it. Taking the conservative path with Hadjar signals a level of investment in him that goes beyond simply filling a chair, and it marks a real shift in how Red Bull has chosen to manage a rookie under pressure.
The Baku Decision
The Azerbaijan Grand Prix, moved to a Saturday this year to avoid clashing with the country’s Remembrance Day, gives Red Bull its next checkpoint. The team has laid out clear criteria rather than a fixed date: get Hadjar into the simulator, expose him to the physical demands of a real cockpit, and gauge whether he feels close to full fitness. If he clears that test, he races in Baku. If not, the team holds to the approach that has guided the entire recovery and keeps Lawson in the car for a fourth straight weekend.
That threshold puts unusual pressure on a single week of preparation. Hadjar has already described the strangeness of mentally rehearsing a car he cannot drive. Now that rehearsal has a deadline attached to it, and a public one. A street circuit like Baku, with its long straights, tight castle section, and history of producing red flags and late-race chaos, is not a gentle track to choose for a comeback. It rewards sharp reflexes and total confidence in car placement, exactly the kind of feel that typically erodes fastest across a month away from the cockpit. Every outlet covering the story has described the decision the same way Red Bull has: fitness first, results second, no shortcuts for a rookie the team has invested a full promotion in.
What Getting This Right Would Mean
A clean return in Baku would do more than end a month on the sidelines. It would answer the first real adversity test of Hadjar’s Red Bull Racing career, a season that until the boxing accident had unfolded almost entirely on the upward trajectory that got him promoted in the first place. Rookies who partner Verstappen face a version of scrutiny that has ended careers faster than almost any other seat on the grid. A driver who struggles alongside a four-time world champion rarely gets the benefit of the doubt that a similar struggle elsewhere on the grid might earn. Hadjar earned that seat by out-performing Lawson across a full season, banking a podium and a points total that made the promotion an easy call for Red Bull’s management. Missing a month to a freak injury, then returning underprepared and struggling, would hand critics an easy narrative that has nothing to do with his actual talent.
Get it right, and the story becomes something else entirely: a rookie who handled an injury that had nothing to do with racing, said so plainly rather than downplaying it, and returned to a demanding street circuit ready to pick up right where his rookie season left off. Hadjar has been candid at every step of this recovery, from calling the injury the first of his life to admitting the strangeness of preparing for a car from the sidelines. That candor has bought him goodwill in a sport that does not always reward honesty over spin. Baku will show whether it also bought him enough recovery time to get back to the level that earned him this seat in the first place. A rookie season that began with a podium at Zandvoort and a shock promotion now hinges, in part, on how his wrist holds up through a single simulator session this week.
Sources:
- https://www.planetf1.com/news/red-bull-isack-hadjar-injury-update-azerbaijan-gp
- https://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/13588635/isack-hadjar-red-bull-drivers-injury-recovery-going-to-plan-as-team-provide-update-on-next-steps-ahead-of-azerbaijan-gp-decision
- https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/nothing-wrong-with-isacks-recovery-mekies-on-when-hadjar-will-return.5VYeVNlvMTpwjhT0zPCwX8
- https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-2025-recap-strong-rookie-year-earns-isack-hadjar-a-podium-and-red-bull-seat/10786353/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isack_Hadjar
