Isack Hadjar will drive the second Red Bull at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. The team confirmed it on Tuesday morning, three races after a wrist injury picked up in training during the summer break took him out of the car.
“Having made a successful recovery from his wrist injury, Isack will return to action at the Baku City Circuit on Thursday,” Red Bull said. Hadjar missed Zandvoort, Monza and the Madring.
The injury came from training, not from a car
Hadjar hurt the wrist during fitness work in August, in the middle of the summer shutdown, and it was bad enough that Red Bull ruled him out of three consecutive race weekends rather than risk him driving at less than full strength. Baku was always the earliest realistic return, and a simulator run was the last box to tick.
Liam Lawson goes back to Racing Bulls
Lawson was promoted from Racing Bulls to sit alongside Max Verstappen for those three weekends, with Yuki Tsunoda moving across to fill the seat Lawson left behind. That chain now unwinds. Red Bull went out of its way to thank him: “The team would like to sincerely thank Liam for his professionalism, dedication and hard work over the past three races.”
He comes back to an unusual weekend
Baku is not a normal Grand Prix this year. The whole weekend has been pulled forward a day around Azerbaijan’s Day of Remembrance on 27 September, so first practice is on Thursday and the race is on Saturday afternoon. Our Azerbaijan Grand Prix schedule and start times has every session.
It is also a street circuit, which is the least forgiving place to find out whether a wrist is fully healed. Baku asks for a lot of steering lock through the old town and a lot of braking at the end of the long run to Turn 1, and the walls do not move.
The wrist is not the hard part
Our worry for Hadjar is not the wrist, it is the three weekends of data he does not have. Lawson has been the one building a reference in that car through Zandvoort, Monza and a brand new circuit in Madrid, and Hadjar walks back into a team that has moved on three races without him. A Thursday start makes that worse, not better: he gets the same two practice sessions as everyone else and one fewer night to think about them.
