Hadjar out of Dutch GP with broken hand, Lawson steps up to Red Bull
Red Bull's Isack Hadjar will miss this weekend's Dutch Grand Prix after breaking his hand during the summer break — reportedly while boxing.
A source close to the Red Bull team confirmed to BBC Sport that the 20-year-old French driver would sit out the Zandvoort round, scheduled for 21–23 August 2026. Red Bull's official guidance at the time of reporting stopped short of a full announcement, stating only that Hadjar is "likely" to miss the race. The team had not revealed details of the injury, but Hadjar is understood to have broken his hand boxing during F1's mandatory summer shutdown BBC Sport.
Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf had earlier reported a wrist injury sustained during a gym session, while specialist outlet The Race flagged Lawson as being on standby for a potential Red Bull recall Crash.net.
In his place steps Liam Lawson. The New Zealander normally races for Racing Bulls — Red Bull's junior squad, renamed from the old AlphaTauri operation — but now gets the call to the senior team. It is a promotion of the sort Red Bull has never been shy about making, sometimes mid-season and sometimes, as here, through sheer circumstance.
The shuffle does not stop there. Yuki Tsunoda, currently listed as Red Bull's reserve driver, will move into Lawson's vacated Racing Bulls seat for the weekend. So one injury triggers a three-seat reshuffle across both Red Bull-branded teams BBC Sport.
For context on the stakes: the Red Bull newsroom's standings snapshot shows Max Verstappen sixth in the 2026 drivers' championship on 109 points, with Hadjar eighth on 68 Red Bull Racing. Zandvoort is Verstappen's home race — a circuit packed with orange-clad Dutch fans — and the weekend where the championship fight resumes after the break.
For fans, what makes this stand out is how quickly a summer-break accident can cascade through a team's plans. A broken hand from a boxing session is not the kind of incident the paddock usually plans around, yet it forces Red Bull to reshuffle both their race programme and their junior team's lineup in a matter of days.
Neither driver move had been officially announced by Red Bull at the time of reporting. The team's public position remained that Hadjar was "likely" to miss the race, with the full confirmation — and any further detail on the injury or recovery timeline — still to come BBC Sport.
