From “big surprise” to being told “next time” needs to be better, Isack Hadjar has walked the gauntlet with Helmut Marko this season.

And it all began with a season-opening crash and tears, to which Marko said: “That was a bit embarrassing.”

Isack Hadjar is told ‘next time it will be better’

Stepping up to Racing Bulls having finished second in Formula 2, Hadjar didn’t get off the mark in his first two races with his formation lap crash in Australia followed by a P11 in China.

In the latter though, he did qualify in seventh place before a botched strategy, Racing Bulls putting him on a two-stopper, cost him a top ten result.

He broke his duck one race later, racing from seventh to eighth at the chequered flag, losing a place to seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton.

F1 2025 head-to-head stats

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2025: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

Marko believed Red Bull had found the next big one.

“Hadjar is the big surprise,” he told the media, including PlanetF1.com. “This is a circuit he knows but everywhere we come, immediately he’s on speed and everywhere he provides a super performance.

“We knew he’s fast, but that he is so consistent, and that he is driving relatively easy, it’s also a surprise for us.”

A very welcome surprise, especially after Liam Lawson fell short when the team decided to put him in the RB21 alongside Max Verstappen before bumping him back to Racing Bulls.

Marko added to Sky Deutschland: “Hadjar has completed the fewest test kilometers in Formula 1 cars and still competes with Antonelli and the like… Here comes a really big one.”

But a week later in Bahrain, on a track where the Red Bull drivers struggled, Hadjar wasn’t able to record a third successive Q3 appearance, out of qualifying in 12th place.

He fell to 13th in the Grand Prix, undone by a poor start. One that Marko, naturally, noted.

“He had a lot of wheel spin at the start, and he was too cautious in qualifying,” the Red Bull motorsport advisor said to Sky Deutschland.

“I told him that in Formula 1, you always have to be at the limit.

“Next time it will be better.”

Next time, which will be the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, the last of the three races in F1 2025’s first triple-header, Hadjar too hopes for a better start.

The 20-year-old revealed he had struggled with his practice starts all weekend, leaving him feeling not at all confident ahead of Sunday’s all-important get-away.

That cost him positions, dropping him into a fierce midfield battle in which he could only recover to P13.

“Honestly, since the start of the weekend, our starts have been quite poor,” he told the media, including PlanetF1.com. “I was not really confident at the race start, and had wheel spin forever.

“Lost two positions before Turn One and then lost more fighting like hell. It got us in the wrong momentum.

“I think it was the right strategy but when you’re so far back, it doesn’t bring points, that’s for sure.

“But I think that if we’d nailed the start, we’d have kept our position with how aggressive we were, [and] the undercut could have paid off.”

Hadjar is P15 in the Drivers’ standings, only one point behind his brief Racing Bulls team-mate and now Red Bull driver Tsunoda.

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