Formula 2 championship leader Isack Hadjar has hinted that he thinks Red Bull should promote him to the big-league sooner rather than later.
Currently, the lineup at Red Bull’s second team, RB, is Yuki Tsunoda alongside 35-year-old Daniel Ricciardo.
Dutch racing personality Tom Coronel thinks the team should be waving goodbye to Ricciardo at the end of the season. "’Ricciardo 2.0’ who learned from his mistakes, blah blah blah, is a nice story. But he just can’t do it anymore.
"He didn’t succeed at McLaren, he didn’t succeed at Alpha Tauri and he will never succeed again," he told the Dutch magazine Formule 1. "He should be honest with himself.
"He is an ideal commentator or analyst for motorsport - he’s funny, he has flair, he can handle anything well. Go ahead and do that, but stop with Formula 1.
"He has no business with a development team anyway. Formula 1 is for the 20 best drivers in the world and he hasn’t been part of that for a long time," Coronel added.
If RB does oust Ricciardo at the end of the year, Liam Lawson is his obvious successor. But F2 series leader Hadjar, a French-Algerian driver, is also a prominent Red Bull junior.
When asked if he thinks a seat should open up for him at Faenza-based RB, the 19-year-old answered: "To begin with, I don’t know.
"But if the junior team and the B team exist, it’s for a reason. And then we can see very well what’s happening at the moment, with the driver market moving a lot," Hadjar told the Red Bulletin in his native French tongue.
"The only thing I can do is show up every weekend."
If a move to F1 doesn’t work out for Hadjar in 2025, a spot might open up among Red Bull’s four race seats for 2026 - with former F1 team boss Eddie Jordan convinced that a move to Mercedes for Max Verstappen remains a big possibility.
"The unrest at Red Bull, and the departures of Adrian Newey and Jonathan Wheatley, cannot be pleasing Max and his father," he told Auto Bild.
"Also, Mercedes has turned the corner and is getting stronger and stronger. So I’d be anything but surprised if Max moves to Mercedes in 2026."