The REAL REASON Red Bull Refuse To Rush Isack Hadjar Back! | Formula 1 2026

A rumor has been circulating in the Formula One paddock that Isaac Hajar's wrist injury is considerably worse than Red Bull has said. Specifically, that alongside the fracture there is a torn tendon, which would mean a recovery measured in months rather than weeks. Laurent Mechies has now been asked about it directly, and his answer was unusually plain. It's not about us wanting to keep anything secret, we're simply using the available time. He's recovering as planned, and with an injury like this, it takes a while. We'll do the final examination the week before Baku and then see what we do. That is a team principle denying concealment while carefully refusing to give a timeline, which is exactly the combination that keeps a rumor alive. Hajar has now missed three consecutive Grand Prix. Liam Lawson has driven the Red Bull at all three. The decision on Azerbaijan comes down to one medical examination in the days before the race. Here is where the rumor came from, and it deserves to be attributed properly rather than treated as fact. Beatrice Frangione, a journalist for the Italian edition of Motorsport, reported what was circulating and was careful to label it as exactly that. Paddock rumors speak of a torn tendon issue, and when there is an injury of this type, recovery is certainly much longer than expected, but obviously we hope he returns to his seat beside Max as soon as possible. Paddock rumors speak of, that is a journalist doing her job properly, reporting what people are saying while making clear it is unconfirmed. Red Bull has never described the injury as anything other than a wrist fracture sustained during a training session over the summer break, widely reported as happening while he was working on a punching bag. Now here is the corrective. Because the secrecy theory does not fit the evidence particularly well. Look at how Red Bull has actually behaved. The team has never set a return date, not once. When Hajar first sat out at Zandvoort, the expectation was that he would be back for Monza. He was not. Then Madrid. He was not. At each stage, Red Bull has said the same thing, which is that his recovery is progressing and that he will return when he is ready. Mekes has been explicit that Hajar will not be in the car until he is 100% fit. That is not the language of a team hiding something. It is the language of a team refusing to be pinned down. There is also a very concrete reason for that caution, and it was reported weeks ago. There are genuine concerns that if Hajar comes back too early and aggravates the injury, he could miss the remainder of the season entirely. A wrist that is not fully healed, in a car pulling the loads these things generate, over a street circuit like Baku with walls everywhere, is an obvious risk. Red Bull has decided that losing three races is preferable to losing nine. And there is a lovely detail buried in this story that almost nobody has picked up. When Hajar was deciding whether to race at Zandvoort, he phoned Marc Marquez. The seven-time MotoGP world champion, a man whose career was nearly destroyed by returning too early from a broken arm, told him to sit the race out. Hajar listened. If you want a single reason to believe Red Bull is being cautious rather than secretive, it is that the advice came from the most famous cautionary tale in motorsport about exactly this mistake. That said, there is evidence the situation is more serious than the original framing suggested. Reports from Zandvoort noted that Hajar was in the paddock, signing autographs, and was visibly reluctant to use his injured hand at all, relying almost entirely on the other one. Adam Cooper reported that Hajar completed a simulator run before Monza, which confirmed he still needed more time. So whatever the precise diagnosis is, a driver who cannot comfortably sign his name, and cannot complete a simulator session, is not a driver with a minor knock. The rumour may be wrong in its specifics, and still be pointing at something real, which is that this has gone on considerably longer than anybody at Red Bull expected. Run the arithmetic on what the absence has cost. Across the three races Lawson has deputised, he has scored 14 points for Red Bull, taking 7th at Zandvoort, 14th at Monza after a pit lane start and front wing damage, and 6th in Madrid. That is a respectable return for a stand-in. And Max Verstappen described him as immediately competitive. But Red Bull sits 4th in the Constructors' Championship, a long way behind Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren. And Hajar, before his injury, had been reaching the final phase of qualifying at every single round, with a run of consecutive top six finishes. The gap between what Hajar was delivering, and what a driver jumping between two different cars can deliver, is real. Even if it is not enormous. The knock-on effects reach further than the Red Bull garage. Every weekend Lawson spends at Red Bull, Yuki Tsunoda occupies his Racing Bulls seat. Tsunoda finished 11th at Zandvoort, 10th at Monza where he scored a point, and 14th in Madrid, where rookie teammate Arvid Lindblad beat him. Neither Racing Bulls seat is under contract for 2027. So, four drivers are now entangled in one man's wrist. And Racing Bulls is defending 5th place in the Championship, by a slim margin over Alpine, while its line-up changes every fortnight. For scale on what Hajar has achieved before all this, remember what his position actually was. He is in his second season in Formula 1. He took the second Red Bull seat that had broken five drivers before him, and he performed in it immediately. Which is something Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon, Sergio Perez, Lawson and Tsunoda all failed to do in their own ways. Mekes has said publicly that Red Bull had never done everything perfectly for its second car, and that Hajar's performances proved the situation had changed. That is the driver currently sitting at home, and it explains why Red Bull is not remotely tempted to rush him. What is confirmed is a wrist fracture, three missed races, a simulator test that did not go well enough, and a team principal saying nothing is being hidden. Anybody presenting the tenderness fact is going beyond what is known. What makes the rumor persistent is not evidence, it is silence. Red Bull has issued short statements without timelines at every stage, which is completely reasonable when you genuinely do not know, but it also creates a vacuum, and Formula 1 paddocks fill vacuums very quickly. Mekes' answer about simply using the available time is probably the most honest thing anyone has said about it, because it acknowledges that the team is taking as long as it is allowed to take, rather than working towards a date. So, here is what to watch, and Mekes has already told us exactly when it happens. The final medical examination takes place in the week before Baku, with the Azerbaijan Grand Prix running on Saturday, the 26th of September. That examination decides everything. If Hajar is cleared, he returns, Lawson goes back to racing bulls, Tsunoda returns to the simulator, and this whole episode closes as an unusually long but ordinary injury absence. If he is not cleared, then a three-race absence becomes four, at a street circuit with concrete walls where wrist loads are among the highest of the season, and the rumors about the severity of the injury will get considerably louder whether or not they are accurate. Either way, the answer arrives within a week, and it is a medical decision rather than a sporting one. So, what do you think? Is Red Bull being appropriately cautious with Isaac Hajar, or should they have given a clearer picture of the injury from the start? And if he misses Baku as well, should Liam Lawson simply keep the seat for the rest of the season? Drop your predictions in the comments. And if you enjoyed this breakdown, smash that like button, and subscribe for more F1 news. I'll catch you in the next one.