Rookie Sensation Isack Hadjar Scores Maiden F1 Podium at Dutch GP: ‘Unreal’

Racing Bulls Formula One driver Isack Hadjar surprised the F1 grid by securing his first stunning podium finish at the Dutch Grand Prix. Describing the achievement as “unreal,” the 20-year-old driver finished in third position, behind race winner Oscar Piastri and runner-up Max Verstappen.

Hadjar set a blisteringly fast lap time of 1:09.208 on Saturday in qualifying, coming close to matching Verstappen’s time with a gap of just 0.283 seconds. He started the race behind the Dutch driver in P4 and maintained position until the final stages of the race, when Lando Norris suffered a mechanical failure.

Norris was chasing Piastri in second place when a suspected oil leak on his MCL39 knocked him out of the race. This moved Verstappen up from P3 to P2, while Hadjar was elevated to P3. Addressing his first premier class podium finish, the Racing Bulls driver said after the race at Zandvoort:

“It feels a bit unreal. What was most surprising for me was keeping that fourth place for the whole race. Unfortunately for Lando we took advantage of his [DNF] but we did no mistakes.

“The car was on rails the whole weekend and I’m really happy about myself because I maximised what I had, made no mistakes and brought home the podium. So I’m so happy for my guys.

“[Being on the podium] was always the target since I was a kid. So this is my first step, my first podium, and hopefully much more [to come].”

Hadjar’s qualifying performance on Saturday raised eyebrows when he came extremely close to matching the four-time world champion’s performance in Q3. When he was asked if he was happy with his lap time, Hadjar said after qualifying:

“Very happy, you know, finally I’m quite satisfied with what I did. So yeah, it was a good job for me. To be honest, it was the car being exactly like I wanted. It was responding really well, especially on that final lap.

“Probably we got a bit lucky with the wind gusts, you know. I don’t know, we need to look at the data. But yeah, I pulled an amazing lap and it sticked because the car was great.”

When asked if that was his best lap in F1, he said:

“Surely it’s probably the best lap I’ve had this year because it’s a very hard track, really demanding. And I put it all on the line, especially that final corner. I thought I did pretty well there to actually gain one more tenth. And yeah, that was special.”