On lap 26 at Baku, Hadjar put the question to his race engineer.
“Can I go for it or what?”
Richard Wood told him to keep it clean. A lap later, on a radio channel Formula 1 did not broadcast, Wood came back with the actual instruction.
“Okay Isack, we want to hold position now, we want to hold position.”
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Hadjar settled in behind Verstappen for the rest of the race. Red Bull finished second and third, with 0.196 seconds covering winner George Russell from Verstappen.
The Frenchman had started on softs and ran them longer than most expected while Verstappen laboured on mediums. On the pit wall he had already sounded out a swap so he could chase Oscar Piastri’s McLaren. The team turned him down.
The podium was Hadjar’s second of the season and his first race back from a wrist injury that cost him three Grands Prix, with Liam Lawson standing in.
Mekies lays out the thinking
Mekies did not hide behind the usual non-answer.
“We looked at all these scenarios, honestly, and we elected to hold the cars in that position,” he told RacingNews365. “We felt it was the best chance to get a chance at Piastri and at Russell.”
He praised Hadjar for taking the call without a public murmur.
“It shows you how cleverly the kid is racing, and how much brain capacity is developing while in the car, and how much emotional control he is managing.”
Asked by GPblog whether being forced into that choice again would be a problem, Mekies turned the question around.
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“If we get to make difficult decisions in the future, it means that we are in a very, very strong position. So we only wish that to ourselves.”
Villeneuve backs Red Bull’s call
Not everyone saw the Baku order as controversial. Former world champion Jacques Villeneuve sided with Red Bull.
“It was perfect. There was no reason to ask Max to let Isack by. Hadjar was on the better tyre and the lap time was similar to Max. Max had a better chance of getting to the front so they did the right thing.”
The deeper backdrop is that Verstappen is still without a win in 2026 and sits sixth in the championship after fifteen rounds, with Kimi Antonelli running away in a Mercedes. Red Bull’s season has been about damage limitation, and Hadjar on his return turned up with the fresher legs and the better tyre call.
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Verstappen fastest on Sepang return
The next instalment starts this weekend. Formula 1 has returned to the Sepang International Circuit for the first time since 2017, with the Bahrain Grand Prix moved to the Malaysian venue.
Verstappen was fastest in Friday’s opening practice on 1:37.520, 0.383 seconds clear of Russell, with Hadjar third and 0.783 seconds off his team-mate, according to the official timing.
Race day is Sunday 4 October.
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