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Has Red Bull made the right decisions on 2026 F1 line-ups?

Red Bull Qatar Isack Hadjar Liam Lawson Yuki Tsunoda Arvid Lindblad Racing Bulls Max Verstappen Pierre Gasly Alex Albon

Red Bull has announced a new driver line-up for the second Formula 1 season running, as Isack Hadjar will replace Yuki Tsunoda for the 2026 campaign.

It comes after an impressive rookie season for Hadjar at Racing Bulls, as he is 10th in the championship with a round remaining having stood on the podium at Zandvoort.

For Tsunoda, meanwhile, he has endured a torrid time since joining Red Bull from the sister outfit for round three of this season as he has only scored 30 points. It leaves him 15th in the championship, team-mate Max Verstappen is second, and he will become Red Bull’s reserve in 2026.

This means there will also be a new driver line-up at Racing Bulls, as F2’s Arvid Lindblad will replace Hadjar for his rookie campaign. The 18-year-old Briton will contest it alongside Liam Lawson, who started this year at Red Bull after Sergio Perez’s dropping.

So is all of this the right thing, or do question marks still linger around the 2026 driver pairings across both Red Bull teams? Our writers have their say.

Deja vu for Red Bull - Oleg Karpov

Yuki Tsunoda, Red Bull Racing, Isack Hadjar, Racing Bulls Team (Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool)

There’s essentially only one thing that is concerning about Isack Hadjar’s promotion. He’s had a great rookie season, with the Zandvoort podium being a clear highlight, and he has shown strong performances in both qualifying and races. Yet that alone isn’t enough to assume he’s ready to step up.

It’s still a big question mark whether Red Bull will be fighting for wins and podiums next year, but if it does, Hadjar will be exposed to all sorts of pressure – and it’s the lows, not the highs, that will be more visible. Driving for the junior team, it’s often the opposite: highlights are enough to make an impression. At the top, consistency is what counts. And is he fully ready for a top drive? To me, not really.

What happened with Daniil Kvyat, Pierre Gasly, Alex Albon and Liam Lawson could easily repeat itself with the Frenchman. None of those drivers were promoted because they were banging on the door of the main squad with irresistible performances – they were promoted because they were simply next in line to be thrown into the seat vacated by those who failed or left. Was Kvyat ready to replace Sebastian Vettel? No. Was Gasly ready to succeed Ricciardo? Also no. And the same goes for Albon and Lawson. They got to Red Bull only because the drivers they replaced failed – Gasly and Sergio Perez respectively.

Perhaps all of them could have coped better had they been promoted a season, or ideally two, later. But getting that chance so early in their F1 careers ultimately worked against them. Max Verstappen is arguably the only one who was promoted to the senior team purely because of his enormous potential. Almost all the others were simply emergency solutions.

And the same could be said about Hadjar. There’s no doubt Yuki Tsunoda didn’t perform at the level required to warrant a contract extension. And it’s no surprise Red Bull wasn’t keen to keep the Japanese driver alongside Verstappen. But at the same time, it’s now Hadjar’s turn to take the seat that has burned so many drivers before him. I hope he copes better than those mentioned above – but is it realistic to expect that?

The switch makes sense - Filip Cleeren

Isack Hadjar, Racing Bulls Team (Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images)

There's no doubt Yuki Tsunoda was dealt a rough hand in a difficult to drive RB21, but it's equally hard to overlook that while Tsunoda has scored 30 points, his team-mate is still in mathematical contention for the world title. For a variety of reasons, the 25-year-old is the latest victim of Red Bull's second car syndrome, and it would have been interesting to see what the Japanese could have done in 2026 when Red Bull vows to make its cars more driveable for both drivers.

But the truth is he hasn't been able to do enough, and on the other side of the Red Bull family Isack Hadjar's performances are harder and harder to ignore, headlined by a maiden podium in Zandvoort. The upside to promoting Hadjar is that the Frenchman will only be in his second season next year and therefore has a longer runway to improve, whereas Tsunoda already has five years of F1 under his belt.

With Racing Bulls existing to train drivers for Red Bull Racing, it therefore wouldn't have made much sense to send Tsunoda back. Liam Lawson delivered a strong enough second half of the season to stay on, and it's worth remembering the New Zealander still hasn't completed a full season for the same team, including the pre-season.

Then there is Arvid Lindblad, the next talent in the pipeline that is at least as highly rated by the Red Bull management as Hadjar was. Like Mercedes rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Lindblad will be thrown in at the deep end next year at the age of 18 and with relatively limited single-seater experience. Here's hoping Lindblad will get time to mature, adapt and make mistakes - much like Antonelli is getting.

Is it too early for Lindblad? – Ben Vinel

Podium: second place Arvid Lindblad, Campos Racing (Photo by: Formula Motorsport Ltd)

I don’t really want to weigh in on whether Red Bull is right to promote Isack Hadjar, or whether Yuki Tsunoda deserved the second Racing Bulls seat more than Lawson. I’m not convinced any current Red Bull-backed driver can do well alongside Verstappen anyway.

But had the decision been mine, I wouldn’t have given an F1 seat to Arvid Lindblad - yet.

Don’t get me wrong. Lindblad has potential, and Red Bull has good reasons to see a bright future for him. But he hasn’t exactly set the world alight so far in Formula 2. The pecking order in F1’s feeder series is admittedly tricky to decipher, but the Campos driver hasn’t been consistent enough – especially compared to other rookies, with champion Leonardo Fornaroli setting a very high standard.

Campos probably isn’t the problem, given Isack Hadjar took the runner-up spot with the Spanish squad last year. After a decent maiden season, maybe Lindblad just needs a sophomore campaign in F2 to gain more experience and refine his skills ahead of his F1 move - and that’s okay. We know Tsunoda can do the job at Racing Bulls anyway.

Red Bull decided otherwise. As ever, the seat next to Verstappen is a poisoned chalice. Let’s hope Hadjar won’t be its next victim.

Where does this leave Lawson? - Ed Hardy

Liam Lawson, Racing Bulls Team (Photo by: James Sutton / Formula 1 / Formula Motorsport Ltd via Getty Images)

Red Bull has constantly promoted and demoted drivers between both of its teams since purchasing Minardi for the 2006 Formula 1 season. Isack Hadjar is now the latest beneficiary of that, while the last driver to be dropped back to the Faenza outfit was Liam Lawson at the start of this year.

Even though the New Zealander is now set for his first full campaign in the championship, should he already be plotting his move out of the Red Bull family? That’s because not once has a driver received a second opportunity at the main team, even if there were calls to give that chance to Pierre Gasly when he was outperforming Alex Albon in 2020 - a year in which he won the Italian Grand Prix.

Red Bull has just never been keen on going back to something it had before and so where does that leave Lawson, having been snubbed in favour of Hadjar for next year? It’s hard to see how he works his way back into the main outfit and with Racing Bulls purely serving as a test bed for Red Bull youngsters, staying there for long isn’t the suggested thing either.

So it might be smart of Lawson if early next season he starts scooping around for opportunities elsewhere in 2027. That could be Alpine because doubts remain over Franco Colapinto, or even Haas depending on how Ferrari wants to manage Oliver Bearman. Wherever the opportunities might arise, Lawson should consider each one with great care.