"We can bring the fight to McLaren": Hadjar outlines aim for 2026 British Grand Prix

After a successful qualifying session which will see Red Bull's Isack Hadjar line up in fifth, the French driver was quick to highlight what he and the team will be aiming for in Sunday's British Grand Prix. Hadjar remains the only driver outside of the front-running pairs of Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren to reach Q3 at every round so far in 2026, aside from his disqualification from qualifying at the 2026 Miami Grand Prix.

Commenting that he "was fairly happy with the car" at the end of the hour-long qualifying session, this is a marked difference in emotion from the driver in his sophomore season. Although he failed to finish the race in Silverstone during his rookie season last year, the French driver enjoys racing at this circuit has he has previously taken wins here in Formula 2 and Formula 3 as well.

However, even starting ahead of his four-time former word champion teammate has not stopped Hadjar being critical about his performance. While he acknowledged that he "made a step driving wise", the newest addition to the Red Bull Racing team implied that this was the best that they could do given their position in team rankings based on performance at the moment.

While Max Verstappen gave the team their best finish of 2026 so far last time out in Austria, the former championship winning team still have plenty of progress to make up before they can comfortably consider themselves front-runners and potential race winners once again. Their collaboration with Ford on their power-unit, the first of its kind in team history, has not delivered the results they would have hoped for at the start of the season.

From his perspective, Hadjar explained that "it's hard when you're sixth-tenths behind pole after a very good lap" as there's little else for either him or his team to change on the car to alter their current position. Even with the limit of the car's performance seemingly being reached, the French driver remained optimistic that "we can bring the fight to McLaren" who are due to start sixth and eighth.