15 NEW TIMES ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT May 1-7, 2025 MIAMI RACE WEEK 2025 GUIDE 15 While less hyped than some fellow rookie drivers, Hadjar has delivered the goods in his early-season racing. Isack Hadjar’s rise to Formula 1 has been a gritty tale of endurance told far from the spotlight, but since joining the big show, the 20-year-old rookie has taken center stage. And now, the rising talent vows to be “spectacular.” IN AN EARLY SEASON SHAPED by high-profile driver swaps, vaunted wonder kids and rumors of early exits, the arrival of one 2025 rookie went almost unnoticed. While the F1 news cycle celebrated the debuts of the prodigiously talented 18-year-old Italian Andrea Kimi Antonelli at Mercedes in place of seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton and Briton Oliver Bearman, 19, who became Ferrari’s youngest-ever F1 driver in a Hamilton-beating, point-scoring appearance for the Scuderia at the 2024 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, the rise to Formula 1 of French-Algerian driver Isack Hadjar barely raised an eyebrow. After Oracle Red Bull Racing parted ways with Sergio Pérez last December and briefly elevated Visa Cash App Racing Bulls driver Liam Lawson to the senior team, Hadjar was seen by many as just the latest product from the Red Bull Junior Team ranks. But while Antonelli and Bearman have definitely impressed, Hadjar has been the surprise package at VCARB. Over the opening five races of the season, the 20-year-old frequently outpaced his Red Bull stablemates, twice qualifying in the top 10 and picking up points in Japan and Saudi Arabia. It was enough to prompt Red Bull’s famously hard-to-please driver mentor Dr. Helmut Marko to brand him “a really big guy for the future.” Quiet achievement and gritty progress have been Hadjar’s model all along. Born in Paris into an Algerian family of highly qualified physicians and physicists—his father, Yassine, is a research scientist at the University of Technology of Troyes, specializing in optics—motorsports were not in the blood. “There is zero connection with motorsports,” says Hadjar. “Well, my dad was watching F1 on TV. After Ayrton Senna died, he was following much less, but then he picked it up again when guys like Kimi Räikkönen and Fernando Alonso were there, so he was watching every Sunday.” But while Hadjar was peripherally exposed to F1 on Sundays, it was another race car on the silver screen that got him hooked on racing. “It was the movie Cars,” he smiles. “I was 2 years old when I first saw it and I just grew up with that movie.” Hadjar’s Lightning McQueen obsession led him to go-karts at the age of 5. He lobbied his parents for more sessions and more racing. “I was always pushing my parents to go into it,” he says. “It’s not like we are millionaires. They’ve sacrificed a lot of things for me to get my chance, because it’s so expensive. I don’t know any parents who would do that for their sons. But they did.” Hadjar now understands why. “I think it’s because my dad knew I was good,” he says. “The first time I jumped into a kart, I think he saw something special. That’s the only reason. Otherwise, my dad is a tough guy, and he wouldn’t have let me do any go-karts.” Once he committed to it, Hadjar’s career became a family affair. His father was his mechanic; his mother split her own medical career with management of her son, making connections, sourcing sponsorships, paying the bills. As Hadjar sees now, it was a hand-to-mouth racing existence. M I A M I RACE W E E K F1 p. 16 >
