Max Verstappen finished second after starting 21st at the São Paulo Grand Prix on Interlagos, crossing the line ten seconds ahead of Red Bull teammate Isack Hadjar in third.
Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies stated that the team would have ordered Verstappen to return second place to Hadjar if both cars had remained close together on track. A late rain shower caused the gap between the two Red Bull drivers to stretch to over nine seconds, making a position swap impractical, RaceXpress reported.
Verstappen began the race 16 grid spots behind Hadjar following an unexpected power unit change. He climbed through the field in mixed conditions and caught his teammate midway through the race, prompting the team wall to intervene in lap 38 to let the Dutchman pass.
“If he doesn’t get past Lando, are we staying like this?” Hadjar asked over his team radio, referencing race winner Lando Norris. When no immediate answer followed, he added, “Hey! Don’t forget to come back to me.”
Race engineer Richard Wood replied, “Yeah, mate, I’m working on it. I’m on it now.” The double podium extended Verstappen’s advantage over George Russell to 17 points in the battle for second place in the drivers’ standings behind champion Kimi Antonelli.
Technical director Pierre Waché assessed Hadjar’s trajectory within the organization, noting that the 22-year-old Frenchman sits eighth in the championship with 122 points after securing podium finishes in Monaco, Baku, and Brazil alongside a fifth place in Bahrain, RacingNews365 reported.
“First he has to determine for himself what he needs to be fast,” Waché said. “He has improved a lot since the beginning of the season. He clearly has enough speed in him, we have already seen that.”
Waché declined to draw direct comparisons with past Verstappen teammates such as Alexander Albon, Pierre Gasly, Sergio Pérez, and Liam Lawson, emphasizing instead that Hadjar currently fulfills the team’s requirements for the constructors’ championship.
“The next step will be winning races and such, but he has that will,” Waché said. “He is developing, and to be honest with him: it’s a tough job to take on the best driver.”
Former Formula 1 driver Riccardo Patrese evaluated the intra-team dynamic after the race in Brazil, expressing satisfaction with Hadjar’s integration while acknowledging a substantial performance margin compared to the team leader, F1maximaal reported.
“He is good. I have always said that I think Hadjar is a good driver,” Patrese said. “But if you have someone like Max, who starts from 21st place in the rain and finishes second, ten seconds ahead of you, then you realize that you are good, but you are not at that level.”
Patrese added that while Hadjar performs better than several earlier teammates who drove alongside the Dutchman, the gap is still large. He also said that Red Bull recovered from a slow start against Mercedes during the campaign to regularly contend for victories.
Racing Bulls confirmed that Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad will remain the team’s driver lineup for 2027, F1Head reported. Lawson scored points in 15 of 20 races and finished seventh in São Paulo, maintaining a 45-point advantage over Alpine in the fight for fifth place in the constructors’ standings with three rounds remaining.
