Max Verstappen's podium delivered Red Bull's headline at Spa, but inside the team the more revealing drive belonged to Isack Hadjar. Starting 21st after a stacked 30-place engine penalty, the rookie carved his way back to sixth - and team principal Laurent Mekies did not hedge on what it meant.
"I think it is his best race. It is the best race with us, no question," Mekies said. "It's not only a spike, it has been just a little bit better every single race for speed. So he's bringing some speed every time he's driving."
Mekies pointed to a bold strategy - two early stops, then a switch back to the hard tyre - that, helped by the timing of a Virtual Safety Car, let Hadjar leapfrog Norris. "His pace was top-three pace, so I'm very happy with his progress," he said, noting the rookie had been "very, very fast from FP1". The numbers backed him up: Hadjar's fastest lap was the third quickest of the race, behind only Norris and winner Kimi Antonelli.
The Race's Edd Straw was positive too, but added perspective. In his driver rankings he judged that a "podium was potentially on the cards without the grid penalty that shaped his weekend", while cautioning that the "climb to sixth was not quite as dramatic as the 15 places gained suggested". Straw also flagged an overlooked detail: before his own penalty demoted him, Hadjar had towed Verstappen to the front row in Q3.
Peter Windsor split the credit differently. On his race review, the veteran analyst suggested Verstappen had been "a little bit bashful" in handing all the glory to Hadjar for that tow, arguing the Dutchman's own work through sector two earned the front-row slot as much as the slipstream did. Even so, Windsor rated Hadjar's recovery from the back highly and praised the hard-medium-hard strategy that made it possible.
Jolyon Palmer, writing for Formula1.com, framed the weekend as Hadjar's "best race weekend yet" and read it as a marker of Red Bull's wider 2026 progress - impressive given the team had reverted from its 'Macarena'-style rear wing to an older specification to cope with Spa's efficiency demands.
Mekies was careful not to oversell it. Red Bull, he admitted, is still "suffering... on an energy-starving track". "We have some homework to do to progress at this sort of track as well. We don't think we have discovered all the tricks," he said, adding the team would "soon find out if Budapest will give us a bit of an upside or not" at this weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix.
With Verstappen's future still the paddock's favourite guessing game, Hadjar's steady climb - better "every single race", by Mekies' reckoning - is quietly turning into Red Bull's most reassuring story of an otherwise awkward season.
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*Originally published on [NewsFormula.One](https://newsformula.one/article/hadjars-spa-fightback-is-red-bulls-best-2026-story). Visit for full coverage.*