Red Bull rules out 2025 F1 driver swap despite Isack Hadjar’s form

Red Bull has ruled out any further line-up changes in the 2025 Formula 1 season, despite Racing Bulls driver Isack Hadjar’s recent form.

Hadjar became the fifth-youngest driver ever to climb atop an F1 podium at the Dutch GP, bringing his personal points tally to 37; that’s over four times as many as Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda have successively scored – nine – in Red Bull’s second car.

While he previously was unsure he could handle the step up to Red Bull, Hadjar has gained confidence of late, and the 20-year-old Frenchman admitted on Thursday that he had a potential promotion “in mind”.

However, Hadjar also insisted there was ‘no point’ doing it now, with a second car that looks like a poisoned chalice, while he expects with the new technical rules for 2026 “there won’t be this talk of the second car thing”.

Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies concurred in the Friday press conference, explicitly stating that any line-up change would happen over the winter – not before the end of the current season.

“We made it very clear, very public, that we have time with our driver decision,” Mekies said. “We have enough drivers between the driver programmes to cover quite a few scenarios for next year, and we don’t have real reasons to rush into decisions.” This refers to Red Bull protege and superlicence holder Arvid Lindblad, who currently lies seventh in his maiden F2 campaign and could be thrown into the mix regarding the 2026 line-up.

“No, we do not plan to change during the season. Yuki has been making a good step in the last three races. We all want more, but he’s doing a good job. He was, for the first time, back in the points after seven races in Zandvoort. He was close enough to Max in Budapest, and had his best qualifying with the team in Spa. So he’s on a positive trend.

“It’s obviously extremely nice to watch Isack’s progress in the Racing Bulls car. To see him performing at the level he did in the last race was a fantastic demonstration of how much progress he’s made this season.

“But really, we are relaxed about the driver topic, because fundamentally we have all our cards on the Red Bull side, and we can take a few more weeks – or months – to decide. Of course, that doesn’t mean we have to wait until the last race to decide, because we respect that it might impact our drivers one way or another. But for sure, we feel we have time right now.”