Racing Bulls CEO Peter Bayer has revealed Prince Bernhard’s involvement in organising the replacement of Isack Hadjar’s broken Dutch Grand Prix trophy.
Hadjar scored his maiden Formula 1 podium finish at Zandvoort last week after finishing third behind McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. But as he celebrated with his team, he accidentally snapped the neck of the handmade trophy.
The French-Algerian driver has since been presented with a replacement trophy ahead of the Italian Grand Prix.
Bayer shared some behind-the-scenes insight with Sky Sports F1 Germany about how the replacement trophy came about, with the influence of Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands.
“Well, Isack had put the trophy on the ground, and I told him, ‘Isack, pick it up, because if everyone starts running around, it’s going to break.’ So he picks it up, sets it down again, and… unfortunately, yes, it broke,” Bayer explained.
“But the organisers — Prince Bernhard of Orange, who’s one of the event hosts in the Netherlands — reached out immediately and said, ‘We’ll help you.’ And this morning, we actually received a replacement trophy.
“The two originals are safely stored in our operations office, and he’ll get to take them home today. A nice little happy ending.”
Isack Hadjar, Racing Bulls Team
Photo by: Clive Rose / Getty Images
Bayer also discussed the significance of Hadjar’s podium finish for the team as a whole.
“Yes, you can see it here — the pure emotions and the joy on the faces of all the drivers and team members celebrating that third place. For us as a team, our last podium was back in 2021 in Baku. This is not an everyday occurrence for us, and maybe there was a little bit of luck involved — the ‘luck of the brave,’ so to speak,” Bayer added.
“But honestly, it only really hit me afterwards when Jean Todt called me and said he was literally jumping up and down in his living room because we managed to hold off Charles Leclerc and George Russell, and at the same time even keep up with Max.
“That shows the car had pace, Isack drove flawlessly, and now of course we’re excited to get back to racing today — hopefully just as successfully.”
In this article
Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics
