Hadjar misses Monza: Lawson stays in the Red Bull

Isack Hadjar will miss a second consecutive Grand Prix. The fractured wrist he picked up in a training session before Zandvoort has not healed quickly enough, so Liam Lawson stays in the Red Bull RB22 at Monza and Yuki Tsunoda stays in the Racing Bulls car.

Nobody in the paddock is surprised. Red Bull had set Wednesday as the cut-off and Hadjar needed to pass a fitness check to make it. He did not.

What actually happened

Hadjar broke his wrist during a workout in the summer break, which is an unglamorous way to lose a race seat and, as he pointed out himself, a new experience.

“It’s my first injury ever in my whole existence, career, whatever,” he said before Zandvoort, “so it’s weird to be on the bench.”

He had been optimistic. Ten days ago he said the fracture was healing fast, that he had more mobility every day, and that he was hopeful for Monza. Wrists do not care about optimism, and a Formula 1 car under braking at Monza is not a gentle test of one.

Two drivers in seats that were taken from them

This is the part worth pausing on, because the substitution chain is more loaded than routine injury cover.

Lawson is driving the Red Bull seat he was removed from early in 2025, after two races, in one of the more brutal calls the team has made. He is back in it, next to Max Verstappen, at a circuit where the car should be reasonable.

Tsunoda is driving the Racing Bulls seat he vacated when he was promoted, and which he lost his claim to entirely when Red Bull made him test and reserve driver for 2026.

So both men are racing this weekend in cars that were, at some point, taken away from them. Neither is auditioning for a 2026 seat, because those are settled. Both are auditioning for 2027, which is a longer and quieter kind of pressure.

Lawson has already answered once

Zandvoort gave the first data point and it was a good one. Lawson finished seventh, which was about what the car was worth on the day.

That is the useful measure for a substitute. Not heroics, and not a crash while reaching for them: simply extracting what the machinery had in it, first weekend back, with no testing.

Monza asks something different. It is a low-drag circuit where a seventh place would feel like less of an achievement. The bar has moved.

What it means for Hadjar

Two races missed is not a season lost, but it is not nothing either.

Hadjar is a rookie in the second Red Bull seat, the most scrutinised position in the sport. Sitting out while your replacement scores points is uncomfortable in any team. In this one it is a particular kind of uncomfortable.

There is no sign Red Bull is looking beyond his return, and this is exactly the sort of injury that resolves fully. But that seat has consumed drivers before, and time out of the car is time the team spends watching somebody else in it.

The rest of the weekend

Monza runs 4-6 September. Elsewhere on the grid, Kimi Antonelli starts from the back after a 20-place power unit penalty, McLaren brings a rotating rear wing it calls the H-wing, and we have previews of Alpine and Audi.

Reporting via Motorsport.com and Crash.net. Photo: Red Bull Content Pool. Published 2 September 2026.