Hadjar eyes a Verstappen teammate 'record' that has stood since Ricciardo

Last weekend's Azerbaijan Grand Prix moved the numbers. Piastri's costly mistake opened the door for Hadjar to seize third place behind his teammate Verstappen, giving Red Bull their first double podium since China in 2024. Looking at the drivers’ standings, Verstappen currently sits sixth on 163 points, while Hadjar is eighth with 86. That leaves the Red Bull team-mates separated by 77 points.

Eight rounds remain, starting with this weekend at Sepang. To finish the year inside Ricciardo's figure, Hadjar can let the gap grow by no more than one point between now and the season finale.

Looking back at Verstappen’s Red Bull career, Ricciardo remains the only team-mate to outscore him over a season. That happened in 2017, when the Australian finished on 200 points compared to Verstappen’s 168. Verstappen turned the tables the following year, but the gap was just 79 points, making it the smallest deficit suffered by one of his team-mates over a full season.

Even that margin was shaped by Ricciardo’s terrible run of reliability. Back then, a string of mechanical problems saw him fall to sixth in the championship despite winning two of the opening six races. He finished the season 79 points behind Verstappen before leaving Red Bull for Renault, and no team-mate since has managed to finish a full season within that margin.

Looking back at the season, Hadjar’s deficit to Verstappen stood at 41 points after 11 rounds, while his average qualifying gap was just over 0.1 seconds - the closest any Verstappen team-mate had been to him since Ricciardo.

The gap then grew while Hadjar was sidelined with a wrist injury. He missed Zandvoort, Monza and Madrid, with Liam Lawson stepping in for those races. Lawson scored 14 points during his stint, courtesy of a seventh-place finish at Zandvoort and sixth in Madrid. Those points counted towards Red Bull’s constructors’ total, but not Hadjar’s drivers’ tally. As a result, the second Red Bull car has scored 100 points compared to Verstappen’s 163.

Sepang does not make the task any easier. Hadjar will start Sunday’s race with a five-place grid penalty for engine changes, while Verstappen returns to the circuit where he claimed victory in the last race held at Sepang in 2017.

The Frenchman’s pace on Friday was encouraging nonetheless. He finished third in FP1, 0.783 seconds behind Verstappen, before setting a stronger performance in FP2, ending the session second and just 0.099 seconds behind Charles Leclerc. Verstappen, meanwhile, ended FP2 in fourth and did not run the soft tyres at any point during the session.

Hadjar’s future is already settled, with Red Bull confirming on September 23 that he will continue alongside Verstappen for the 2027 season. Verstappen himself is contracted to the team through the end of 2030.