Speed Read: Three Things You Didn’t Know About Isack Hadjar

Hadjar’s family background is in academics, not racing

While most F1 drivers have some sort of family connection to the world of racing, that is not the case for Isack Hadjar. 

“My grandparents and parents are mainly doctors or physicists so they have nothing to do with motor sport,” he said in an interview with Motorsport Magazine at the end of 2024. 

Indeed, Hadjar grew up in an extremely academic household with his mother Randa, who is an HR director, and his father, Yassine Hadjar, a quantum physicist working at the University of Technology of Troyes in northeastern France. His parents put a heavy emphasis on Hadjar’s education, and he kept his studies going throughout his entire junior racing career.

“That’s why he didn’t win any championships in karting or junior formula racing,” Yassine said to the New York Times in October, 2025, “because he was present physically at school until F2.”

It may have meant that the results took a bit longer to come, but the academic environment he grew up in is reflected in Hadjar’s driving style. He is now known for being highly analytical and focused on data, a trait that is often highly praised by motorsport engineers. 

Hadjar also paid homage to his father’s research and the foundational significance of physics in the world of motorsports with a custom helmet design for the 2025 F1 season featuring 10 physics equations that Yassine helped him select. 

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His first time in a kart was “terrifying”

Fear is not the typical memory that most drivers have of their first time behind the wheel, yet this is the feeling that Hadjar remembers.

“When I was five, [my father] put me in a rental kart, and I found it terrifying,” he said to Autosport journalists in the first half of the 2025 season.

But that was not enough to quell a curiosity and passion for the sport, and it did not take long before Hadjar was attending regular weekend karting sessions just outside of his hometown Paris, France. By the end of 2012, when he was just eight years old, Hadjar began karting competitively and while his first time in a kart may have felt terrifying his first time in competition was anything but.

“I won my first race there on the first attempt,” he recalled, back when he was still driving in Formula 2. “I felt like I was really made for racing, immediately on it. I remember I won my first race or two. That was it.”

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He secured Racing Bulls’ first podium since 2021

His intellect and innate talent helped propel Hadjar through the racing ranks, and in 2025 he made his F1 debut with Racing Bulls. He collected 51 total points throughout the season, out-performing his more experienced teammate, Liam Lawson, and placing 12th in the Drivers’ Championship, the second-highest among the five rookies of that year. 

But his most impressive result of the season came at the 2025 Dutch Grand Prix. After a scoreless string of five races, in which he either placed in the bottom 10 or was forced to retire his car, Hadjar put together a statement drive in Zandvoort, crossing the finish line third overall. With this, he not only secured his maiden podium during his debut season, but he also scored his team’s first podium in over four years.

The last time Racing Bulls were among the top three was the Azerbaijan Grand Prix of 2021, when the team was still called Scuderia AlphaTauri. Pierre Gasly secured a P3 for the team after a late head-to-head with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc for the position. Coincidentally, this very race also marked Sergio Pérez’s first win for Red Bull, the team that Hadjar now drives for.