It’s undeniable that Isack Hadjar has one of the most intimidating reference points in Formula 1 sitting just a few metres away in the Red Bull garage, but rather than being overwhelmed by Max Verstappen, the Frenchman is treating the experience as a priceless education.
At just 22, Hadjar is already in his second F1 season and has gone from promising rookie to Verstappen's team-mate in remarkably quick fashion.
His promotion followed a breakthrough 2025 campaign that included his first podium at Zandvoort, while further rostrum finishes in Monaco and Azerbaijan have strengthened the case for his place among Red Bull's long-term plans.
His latest podium was particularly striking. Hadjar returned from a wrist injury that had kept him out of three races and immediately delivered a standout performance in Baku, helping Red Bull confirm his place alongside Verstappen for 2027.
But if the pressure of sharing a garage with a four-time world champion might be enough to make a young driver nervous, Hadjar sees something rather different: an opportunity to learn from a benchmark he believes few others could provide.
‘I'm one very, very lucky guy’
Speaking on this week’s Beyond the Grid podcast, Hadjar admitted that he has effectively been dropped into the deepest end of the F1 pool.
“I'm probably facing the prime of the prime of the level you can achieve in Formula 1 and he’s just next to me in the garage. To experience this at my age, this early in my career, I'm one very, very lucky guy,” he said.
“He's a very, very kind guy. We get along really well. It's good to work with him. I'm grateful because he gives me so much to work with, to improve, which probably no one else can give. So just for that, I'm thankful and it's great," Hadjar declared.
©Red Bull
The Frenchman arrived at Red Bull with a clear idea of what Verstappen represented. Living alongside that standard, however, has given him a much more detailed understanding of what makes the Dutchman so difficult to beat.
“I would say it’s exactly what I expected Max Verstappen to be on the track,” he explained.
“I had an idea of how good he was and it translates really well. What I have in my mind that I want to achieve on track, he kind of does it. But there's always a difference between what you're aiming to do and what you actually deliver.
“There's always a little gap sometimes, but he's constant, he doesn't like really have low moments. I would say, it's just like no mistake. He's always at the right time, the right place as well. He creates his own luck a bit.
“But I love the challenge. I love going into every session knowing that he's going to set a benchmark that I need to match and I need to overcome. It's just exciting. It changes from everything I've had my whole career.”
The Verstappen lesson is consistency
Hadjar's observations go beyond spectacular laps or individual flashes of speed. What has caught his attention most is Verstappen's ability to repeatedly operate at an exceptionally high level without the significant dips that can open the door for a rival.
“Let's say on a track, you have like 15 corners and maybe there's one corner you master, or two, three, four, five corners, you do really, really well. But he matches you there and then on the others, he keeps that same level,” he said.
“And then over the lap, he makes the lap time difference. I wouldn't say I look at the data and I'm like, ‘I can't reproduce this.’ It's how often he does it. That makes the big difference at the end. It's like he has no peak, it’s flat. It's up there, but it's flat. It's what makes him such a tough driver," Hadjar explained.
That may be the most useful lesson Hadjar can take from his team-mate. The challenge is not necessarily discovering some secret Verstappen technique that cannot be replicated, but learning how to reproduce a high level of performance relentlessly.
Hadjar believes he is increasingly getting there, but also knows that the final step towards becoming a regular front-runner involves eliminating the small compromises that can undermine an entire weekend.
“I think so far now I've been doing a good job at being there,” he contended. “But there's still that thing missing... There are a few things that I need to align a bit more. Sometimes it can be a race start that we compromise.
“Sometimes it's that first stint with the heavy car killing the tyres a bit early, being two positions up the grid in qualifying, you're missing half a tenth, and then you have a different Sunday unfortunately. It's all these little things you can align like Max does, and then you're in contention.”
With his Red Bull future already secured for 2027, Hadjar now has something extremely valuable: time.
He has the opportunity to keep measuring himself against Verstappen, absorb what he can from the four-time champion and gradually turn the lessons from the other side of the garage into his own weapons.
For a driver only 22 years old, being able to learn that process from one of F1's most formidable benchmarks may indeed be a very lucky place to find himself.
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