Red Bull F1 star Isack Hadjar admits hiding major injury after 'stupid' punch

Red Bull

F1 star admits hiding major injury after 'stupid' punch

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Chris Deeley Editor

Experienced sports writer covering F1 and other motorsports since 2023

Wednesday 30 September 2026 19:45

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Isack Hadjar has opened up for the first time on how he sustained the injury which cost him three races of his first Red Bull season - and how he kept it a secret for a day as he came to terms with it.

The 22-year-old French driver returned to action last time out in Baku, driving possibly his best race of the season to finish third behind George Russell and Max Verstappen, having been forced out of the Dutch, Italian and Spanish Grands Prix after the summer break.

It was widely known that Hadjar suffered a broken wrist while training toward the end of the summer break, with a boxing-related cause reported, and the Red Bull star has finally spoken directly about the moment of calamity, and the instant denial he felt.

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The injury did indeed occur while punching a bag, with Hadjar sheepishly admitting on the Beyond The Grid podcast that it was a 'bad hit', and that he didn't have his hands wrapped at the time.

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Hadjar: I'd never broken anything in my life

"It's very stupid," he admitted. "I finished a gym session, conditioning on the bag, and it's just like...a very bad hit, I was not strapped...it was a s*** bag, I must say."

Asked if he was in any pain after the punch, though, he said: "Not at all. The next day, when I woke up [there was pain].

"Never ever my mind did I think it would be a fracture, because I felt limited and I had pain but I've never broken anything in my whole life.

"When he told me I'm out for this amount of weeks, I was like 'yeah but I have a race in five days, so how do we do now?' So yeah, it was a big shock."

'I think I kept it secret for a day'

Host Tom Clarkson then asked Hadjar to talk him through the call to inform team principal Laurent Mekies about the blow, with the 22-year-old admitting that he actually didn't tell his boss himself - and even withheld the news for a day while he mulled over his options.

"Actually, the first one I called was my trainer, then the physio of the team," he said. "And then...I don't remember breaking the news to Laurent [Mekies], I didn't do that. I think someone else did it for me.

"I think I kept it a secret for a day to plan what I wanted to do with my wrist, and then we broke the news. For a day, I had a lot of thoughts going on."