Isack Hadjar is “confident” that he could go on to have a Formula 1 career equal to that of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.

The Frenchman – who joins the F1 2025 grid with Red Bull’s junior team VCARB – made it clear that he is not in Formula 1 just to participate.

Has Red Bull found their next Max Verstappen in Hadjar?

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

While in recent years something of a bottleneck had formed when it came to young drivers trying to break through into Formula 1, said bottleneck was well and truly dislodged for F1 2025 with a host of new faces joining the grid.

After making their debuts last season, Oliver Bearman and Jack Doohan now step up to Formula 1 full-time with Haas and Alpine respectively, while also joining Hadjar in the debutant ranks are Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli and Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto, the reigning Formula 2 champion.

Hadjar finished runner-up to Bortoleto last season, but comes to F1 with future title glory on his mind.

Red Bull already has an active multi-time World Champion as Verstappen goes about chasing a remarkable fifth straight World Championship in a row in F1 2025, and Hadjar is aiming for such a level too in his F1 career.

Asked by RacingNews365.com whether he believes he can match the achievements of reigning four-time champion Verstappen in F1, Hadjar responded: “Yes.

“I have confidence. That’s what I want to do. I don’t want to be an F1 driver just to be in F1. I’m not interested in just being here. I want to do well.”

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The F1 2025 rookies are almost ready to hit the grid in Melbourne, and after his one-and-a-half days of testing at the wheel of the VCARB 02, Hadjar picked out qualifying performance as an area of his game that needs further work going into the Australian Grand Prix.

Asked how he felt testing had gone for him, Hadjar told the media, including PlanetF1.com: “I would say I got up to speed fairly quickly.

“Just able to push the limit of the car quite well. Got used to F1. But now the more difficult bit is to extract the most out of it when it matters, and especially on short runs, I feel like there’s still some work to do. It’s hard to get the tyres in the right window as well.

“So yeah, then learned a lot on really long runs. Made a whole race distance. My first race distance, I have to say, was really long, but yeah, learnt a lot.

“And yeah, finally, this morning [Friday], I think we had probably our best half a day. Learned a lot, tried many setups. And to be fair, I feel I’m as ready as possible for Melbourne.”

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