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A double pitstop in the opening two laps would normally signal that a Formula 1 race has gone badly wrong. At the Belgian Grand Prix, however, Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar turned that unlikely start into a sixth-place finish.
Hadjar began from the back of the Spa-Francorchamps grid after a penalty linked to the installation of his fifth power unit of the season. He started on hard tyres, expecting to make the most of a long opening stint, and moved up two places to 18th before the safety car was deployed after George Russell’s lap-one crash.
Red Bull used the neutralisation to put Hadjar on medium tyres. With the two-compound requirement already covered, the team brought him in again at the end of lap two for another set of hards. It was an unusual sequence, but one that preserved strategic flexibility — a central consideration in the Belgian Grand Prix strategy guide.
“The goal was to have options later,” Hadjar told French broadcaster Canal+. “We did lose a few positions, but we knew I was going to get them back quite quickly. It gave me flexibility to be able to choose later on. I picked hards, which I preferred, and it worked.”
Even Hadjar initially struggled to understand the logic behind the opening calls.
“Even I was a bit lost with the pitstops. After a few laps I actually understood why we did that. I was a bit slow in the head, I have to say,” he joked to the written press.
The gamble ultimately became a de facto one-stop race, with Hadjar making his next pit visit under the virtual safety car. His pace then did the rest. His fastest 10-lap average was 1m49.727s, quicker than Max Verstappen’s 1m49.809s, and he had climbed into the top 10 by lap 15.
Hadjar held off Lando Norris, who had started 13th and made his only stop on lap 30, to secure sixth. Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies called it Hadjar’s best race for the team and said his pace was at a top-three level after a very strong weekend from FP1 onwards.
The result gives Hadjar 60 points this season — twice the total scored by Red Bull’s second car last year with Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda sharing the seat.
He’s a software engineer with a deep passion for Formula 1 and motorsport. He co-founded Formula Live Pulse to make live telemetry and race insights accessible, visual, and easy to follow.