Max Verstappen will have another new teammate in 2026.
Red Bull Racing announced that Isack Hadjar would be promoted from Racing Bulls to replace Yuki Tsunoda next season. Hadjar will be the fourth teammate for Verstappen in the last three seasons as the team has struggled to find someone to remotely keep pace with the four-time champion.
Verstappen is currently 10 points behind Lando Norris for the driver’s championship heading into the final race of the season on Sunday in Abu Dhabi. Red Bull has scored 426 points so far this season. Verstappen has 396 of those.
Hadjar is 10th in the standings with 51 points. He has 10 top-10 finishes over 23 races this season.
Sergio Perez parted ways with the team after the 2024 season. He scored 152 points and finished eighth in the standings as Verstappen beat Norris by over 60 points. Perez was replaced by Liam Lawson to start 2025, but Lawson made it two races before he was replaced by Tsunoda thanks to a crash in the season-opening race in Australia and a 12th-place finish in China.
After scoring three points in the China sprint race, Tsunoda has scored just 30 points at Red Bull. Sixteen of those points came across two race weekends in Baku and at the Circuit of the Americas.
Lawson has 33 points at Racing Bulls in that same span and will remain with the team next season. He’ll be paired with Arvid Lindblad as he moves up from Formula 2. Tsunoda will serve as Red Bull’s reserve driver in 2026.
The struggles of Verstappen’s teammates in recent seasons has been chalked up, among other things, to a car that’s been tailored to Verstappen’s unique and incredible driving style. Will that continue in 2026? New car regulations are on the way for next season as teams are having to wholly re-design their cars and Red Bull will also have a new engine supplier in Ford. Will that benefit Hadjar? Or will the trend of underperformance in the second Red Bull car continue?
