Red Bull lifts lid on Max Verstappen team orders decision after Hadjar radio exhange

Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies has explained why Max Verstappen was not instructed to return a place to Isack Hadjar in the Sao Paulo Grand Prix after their earlier swap.

The Milton Keynes-based squad’s resurgence continued with a fine double podium in Brazil, with Verstappen and Hadjar crossing the line in second and third, respectively.

Red Bull explains decision-making behind car swap in Brazil

Despite lining up 16 positions behind his teammate due to an unplanned power unit change, Verstappen powered through the field in changeable conditions at Interlagos to catch Hadjar by the halfway point, prompting Red Bull to intervene on the pit wall.

Hadjar complied with an order to allow Verstappen into second place on Lap 38, but he queried whether the favour would be returned if Lando Norris could not be caught.

“If he can’t get by Lando, do we stay like this?” Hadjar inquired.

When his question was initially greeted with silence over the airwaves, the Frenchman said: “Hey! Don’t forget to get back to me,” to which his race engineer, Richard Wood, then replied: “Yeah, mate, I’m working on it. I’m working on it now.”

With Verstappen struggling with the balance of his Red Bull, Hadjar stayed in touch with the Dutchman until a late rain shower saw the gap balloon to over nine seconds.

Mekies has divulged that the team would have been prepared to tell Verstappen to hand the place back to Hadjar had the latter remained close enough to his teammate.

Asked whether consideration was given to inverting the team’s cars, Mekies replied: “I think we would have done it if the cars had stayed close together.

“We would have done it because Isack had a very strong pace and he stayed with Max, as you have seen after the swap.

“But then, as the race panned out and the rain came again, the cars were very, very distant and it wouldn’t have made sense. Plus, [with the] increased rain intensity at the end, it would not have made any sense.

“But I have to say, Max and Isack worked very, very strongly together to give us a result.”

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The decision saw Verstappen maximise his points haul, granting him a 17-point lead over George Russell in the battle to finish as runner-up to champion Kimi Antonelli.

Along with his teammate, who is on a seven-race run of top-three results, Hadjar has also capitalised on Red Bull’s improved competitiveness since the summer break, having backed up his podium in Monaco with further third places in Baku and Brazil.

“I think ultimately, if you ask me right now, I think it’s the best race he has done with us in terms of pure pace,” Mekies said of Hadjar’s performance in the Sao Paulo GP.

“And that’s what we look at: pure pace on the drys, on the inters, super difficult conditions, in how clever he has been racing.

“He has done a lot of very strong racing this year. I think he has raised the bar another time. So that’s what we want to keep seeing.

“That’s what we said we were most impressed by when we took the decision to confirm him for ‘27 is the way he keeps raising the bar, and we were simply hoping to provide him with the environment for him to keep doing that. I think he has done that today in terms of race.”

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