diff --git a/core/src/test/scala/unit/kafka/server/LogRecoveryTest.scala b/core/src/test/scala/unit/kafka/server/LogRecoveryTest.scala
index 880950ae02c..1bd15f7b537 100755
--- a/core/src/test/scala/unit/kafka/server/LogRecoveryTest.scala
+++ b/core/src/test/scala/unit/kafka/server/LogRecoveryTest.scala
@@ -143,6 +143,15 @@ class LogRecoveryTest extends ZooKeeperTestHarness {
       leader == 0 || leader == 1)
 
     assertEquals(hw, hwFile1.read.getOrElse(topicPartition, 0L))
+    /** We plan to shutdown server2 and transfer the leadership to server1.
+      * With unclean leader election turned off, a prerequisite for the successful leadership transition
+      * is that server1 has caught up on the topicPartition, and has joined the ISR.
+      * In the line below, we wait until the condition is met before shutting down server2
+      */
+    waitUntilTrue(() => server2.replicaManager.getPartition(topicPartition).get.inSyncReplicas.size == 2,
+      "Server 1 is not able to join the ISR after restart")
+
+
     // since server 2 was never shut down, the hw value of 30 is probably not checkpointed to disk yet
     server2.shutdown()
     assertEquals(hw, hwFile2.read.getOrElse(topicPartition, 0L))