The Red Bull decision that surprised Juan Pablo Montoya in Baku

Juan Pablo Montoya was surprised that Red Bull gave Isack Hadjar the go-ahead to race Max Verstappen in Baku, even if it was short-lived.

Red Bull recorded its first double podium since 2024, with Verstappen and Hadjar second and third behind race winner George Russell at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Juan Pablo Montoya questions key Red Bull decision

Hadjar and Verstappen were third and fourth in the early running in Baku when Hadjar was told to “remember, race time is priority here”.

Moments later Verstappen passed him into Turn 1.

The four-time world champion, who was running the medium Pirelli tyres with Hadjar on the soft rubber, was not able to break free of his teammate.

That prompted Hadjar’s race engineer to ask: “Isack, if you had free air, how much faster could you go?”

But while Hadjar said he would probably be “two, three-tenths” quicker, he was “happy to stay honestly, otherwise we’re just going to lose time”.

However, losing time to race leader Russell as Verstappen struggled on the medium tyres, Hadjar told Wood: “I have pace, just in case.”

Pace that he showed at the end of lap 26 as he closed in on Verstappen’s rear wing out of Turn 19.

“Can I go for it or what?” Hadjar asked.

Wood replied: “Got to keep it clean.”

Verstappen moved off the racing line through Turn 1 to ensure his teammate stayed behind him, before Hadjar was told to back off.

“Okay Isack,” Wood told his driver, “We want to hold position now; we want to hold position.”

Verstappen swapped the medium tyres for a set of soft Pirellis when the Safety Car was deployed after Alex Albon crashed, with Hadjar changing from the soft to the medium compound.

After that the Frenchman wasn’t able to maintain Verstappen’s pace and finished 10 seconds behind his teammate, who lost out to Russell by 0.196s.

Montoya was left to ponder what could have been had Red Bull allowed Hadjar to pass Verstappen when the Dutchman was struggling with his tyres.

“At that point it made sense to let Max go because he seemed to be quicker, but I think Max had started struggling with the tyres,” Montoya said in F1TV’s post-race review.

“So at that point it would have made more sense to let Hadjar go by again and give it a go because then if you pass Oscar early enough then you might have a shot.

“Maybe it would have been different than the end result because then you might get two restarts, two goes at George.

“And the crazy thing is, they said to Hadjar, ‘Hey, we’re just focusing on the fastest race, and we need to let Max go because it’s quicker’.

“But when it was the other way around, it’s like…”

He was, however, happy that Red Bull briefly entertained the idea of Hadjar being allowed to race Verstappen for position. Even if it was only for a few corners.

“But something that I liked is they told Hadjar just race clean. They didn’t say ‘stay’, just said ‘race clean’.

“That I thought, I was like, ‘Wow, that’s new’.”

Max Verstappen vs Isack Hadjar: Red Bull F1 2026 scores

F1 2026: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between teammates

F1 2026: Head-to-head race statistics between teammates

Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies was full of praise for Hadjar for both his pace and his teamwork.

“He has raised the bar again,” the Frenchman told PlanetF1.com and other media.

“We say to each other very often that we have seen him adding something to the business every time he was going out on the track in the first part of the season, and he is continuing to do that.

“On top of that, allow me to say he also raced extremely cleverly with Max, very disciplined with his tyres, and he told us to have very strong teamwork between the two, between the pit wall, and ultimately, this produced the best result possible.”

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