Karun Chandhok has opened up on what a Formula 1 team’s engineers have told him away from the paddock about their driver before the 2025 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
The 2025 F1 season has rolled into Jeddah this week for round five of the term plus the final leg of the first triple-header of the year. McLaren have largely dominated in the early rounds to see Lando Norris lead the F1 drivers’ championship over Oscar Piastri by just three points.
But the championship is much richer than just the top battle, with Lewis Hamilton still trying to get up to speed with Ferrari plus Max Verstappen fighting with his tricky Red Bull. Rookies are also a big talking point with the 2025 F1 grid boasting the most since in the 2010 season.
Karun Chandhok thinks Isack Hadjar has ‘surprised’ Racing Bulls as their engineers expected ‘a lot’ of crashes
Red Bull put two rookies on the 2025 grid after Liam Lawson initially replaced Sergio Perez in their main team, which opened a space at their sister team Racing Bulls for Isack Hadjar. The 20-year-old has now been joined in Faenza by Lawson as Yuki Tsunoda got his Red Bull seat.
Hadjar has been one of the stars of the season so far with his form for Racing Bulls ahead of the Saudi Arabian GP, as well. Chandhok called Hadjar the ‘standout’ F1 rookie after earning his first points with P8 at the Japanese Grand Prix – even finishing in front of Tsunoda in P12.
READ MORE: Who is Racing Bulls 2025 F1 driver Isack Hadjar? Everything you need to know
The Paris native also reached Q3 in qualifying for the first time at the Bahrain Grand Prix and Hadjar has ‘surprised’ Damon Hill with his ‘very impressive’ rookie results. Even Racing Bulls have been shocked, as Chandhok claims their engineers expected Hadjar would crash ‘a lot’.
Chandhok said on Sky Sports F1 (19/04, 15:04): “I think it’s actually surprised the team. Just talking to some of the engineers at airports and stuff like that, they were expecting this fiery character who was going to have a lot of shunts etc.
“I think they’ve been pleasantly surprised, actually, and he’s been going really well.”
Isack Hadjar worried Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko with his angry radio messages in F2
Hadjar arrived in F1 with a reputation for being a ‘fiery character’, having shown a very short fuse in Formula 2. The Frenchman was always quick to share any anger over the radio, which saw Helmut Marko tell Hadjar to ‘keep his emotions under control’ before he debuted in F1.
He even nearly threw away his chance to graduate to F1 as Hadjar spun in the F2 Sprint Race at the 2024 Qatar Grand Prix. The Parisian dropped his Campos with just three laps left after losing the lead to PREMA rival Oliver Bearman, who is even now a Formula 1 driver for Haas.
The crashes the £965m-valued Racing Bulls F1 team expected from Hadjar also arrived from his debut. Yet the 2024 F2 championship runner-up bounced back superbly after Marko said Hadjar crying for crashing in Australia was ‘embarrassing’ after retiring on the formation lap.
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