COLUMN: Racing Bulls rookie Isack Hadjar on reaching F1, coping with pressure and doing his family proud

Then, throughout January and February, I spent lots of time at VCARB’s factories in Faenza, Italy, and Milton Keynes, the UK.

It’s mainly been about team building with my guys, even if I’ve known most of them since my first F1 experience at the 2023 Mexico City Grand Prix – when I drove for Scuderia AlphaTauri in the opening practice session. It’s crazy that almost a year-and-a-half has passed since then. It feels like it was just a few weeks ago…

ANALYSIS: The key factor that saw ‘raw talent’ Hadjar handed his shot with Racing Bulls

Driving an F1 car for the first time in an FP1 session is not normally something that happens, with no private test run or anything like that coming before it. It’s also cool that my first F1 outing was filmed!

Anyway, the team wasn’t new to me, and it meant we could get to work at the factories straight away over the winter. I’ve done a lot of laps in the simulator and spent plenty of time with my engineer, looking through technical points, attending meetings and so on.

It’s all been great so far, and we’re progressing well.