Injury, Reshuffle, Redemption: How a Boxing Mishap Reopened Two F1 Careers Overnight
A wrist injury sustained boxing during F1's summer break has triggered a driver reshuffle at Red Bull and Racing Bulls, handing Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda unexpected opportunities at the Dutch Grand Prix.
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Sometimes a career-changing break comes from the strangest place — in this case, a gym.
Red Bull confirmed on Wednesday that Isack Hadjar will sit out this weekend's Dutch Grand Prix after fracturing his wrist during a boxing session over F1's summer shutdown. Neither Red Bull nor Hadjar has gone into detail about how the injury happened beyond that, but Sky F1's Craig Slater reported it came from training, not a road or karting incident.
What followed set off a chain reaction most of the paddock didn't see coming.
Liam Lawson gets bumped up from Racing Bulls to fill Hadjar's seat alongside Max Verstappen at Red Bull's senior team — a promotion that's more complicated than it sounds, given Lawson's history there. This is actually the second time he's stepped into Red Bull under almost identical circumstances. Back in 2023, at this exact same circuit, he covered for an injured Daniel Ricciardo, who'd also hurt his wrist. History, apparently, likes to repeat itself at Zandvoort.
Lawson's full-time promotion to Red Bull for 2025 lasted just two races before he was dropped back down to Racing Bulls — a demotion that stung enough to become something of a cautionary tale in F1 circles. Team principal Alan Permane has said publicly he wants Lawson to finally get an uninterrupted season with one team. This weekend's call-up, ironically, denies him exactly that.
That leaves an open seat at Racing Bulls, and reserve driver Yuki Tsunoda is stepping into it. For Tsunoda, this is his first race since Abu Dhabi at the end of last season — he was dropped after failing to impress during his own short stint at Red Bull, taking over from Lawson mid-2025 in what became something of a driver-swap loop between the two.
Tsunoda didn't hide his excitement. "Happy to get back behind the wheel this weekend and step in for the team," he wrote on social media, alongside a message wishing Hadjar a fast recovery.
Racing Bulls echoed the sentiment in an official statement, thanking both Lawson and Tsunoda for adjusting to unfamiliar cars on short notice, while Red Bull's own statement kept things brief and supportive: wishing Hadjar a speedy recovery and thanking Lawson for stepping in.
As for Hadjar, he's currently eighth in the drivers' championship and had been on a run of seven straight point-scoring finishes — solid momentum to lose, even temporarily. The full recovery timeline hasn't been confirmed, but he'll have roughly two weeks before the next round at Monza on September 6, giving him a shot at returning for the Italian Grand Prix if the injury heals on schedule.
For Lawson and Tsunoda both, Zandvoort is being framed less as a routine substitution and more as a shot at redemption — two drivers who each had their Red Bull stint cut short, getting an unexpected second look under very different circumstances than either probably imagined.