It took just a week for all the air to come out of the Red Bull Racing balloon.
On Saturday in Japan Max Verstappen stunned to pinch pole from the error-prone McLaren drivers, and on a Sunday dominated by the power of track position, the Dutchman was absolutely flawless to hold the lead for his first victory of the season.
Saturday in Bahrain couldn’t have gone any differently.
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Verstappen harried his car to an underwhelming seventh on the grid, his lap more than half a second off the pace.
Sunday was arguably even worse. On a day mired by strategy errors, pit stop malfunctions, brake problems and a general lack of willingness from his car, he made up only one position on his grid spot after passing Pierre Gasly on the final lap — but after Andrea Kimi Antonelli had been shuffled out of the points by the safety car.
“Basically everything went wrong,” Verstappen said. “We had a poor start — too much wheel spin when I dropped the clutch.
“Then the first stint it was basically the same problems I had in qualifying [with the brakes], plus we’re just overheating our tyres too much compared to the competition ahead of us.
“Then the first stop I think the lights [on the gantry] got stuck on, but I didn’t want to drive through the lights; I stuck to the protocol of the team. That put me into traffic as well.
“Then the hard tyres unfortunately didn’t work, so I was just sliding around even more than I was on the soft.
“Then we boxed again — an even worse pit stop, so then I was last.
“Considering everything, to be honest, to finish P6 is then all right!”
He put on a brave face, but while he was giving his post-race interviews, Autosport reported that management figures were locked in impromptu crisis talks over the dire performance.
Sky Sports pit report Ted Kravitz relayed that he’d seen his manager, Ray Vermeulen, engage Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko in an animated conversation over the car’s lack of pace.
It’s a long fall from the team’s almost total domination of the sport just two years ago, and though Verstappen is only eight points off the championship lead, it’s a far, far cry from the individual brilliance of last year’s title triumph.
It’s enough to have Verstappen considering his future, with Marko telling German television afterwards that the threat of a walkout is real.
“The concern is great,” he told Sky Sport Germany. “Improvements have to come in the near future so that he has a car with which he can win again.”
PIT TALK PODCAST: Michael Lamonato and Matt Clayton dissect Oscar Piastri’s pole-to-flag masterclass in Bahrain and what that means for teammate Lando Norris as another huge week of motorsport is in the books. Listen below of watch on YouTube.
RED BULL IS STILL HAUNTED BY 2024 DEMONS
Last year Verstappen had the advantage of a competitive car for the opening phase of the season. The Dutchman amassed a 53-point lead over Norris by the end of round 6, the Miami Grand Prix, after which McLaren levelled the ledger in terms of pure car performance.
Verstappen beat Norris to the title by 63 points. In other words, almost all the damage had been done before the sport even got to Europe.
What happened after that, though, was the culmination of a development trajectory into which several flaws had been baked.
“Already through the very last stages of 2023 the car was starting to become more difficult to drive,” former chief technical officer Adrian Newey revealed to Auto Motor und Sport earlier this year.
“It’s something I was starting to become concerned about, but not many other people in the organisation seemed to be very concerned about it.
“From what I can see from the outside … the guys at Red Bull — this is no criticism — but I think they just, perhaps through lack of experience, kept going in that same direction.”
The car became terminally unpredictable. The balance between the front and rear axles became disconnected, throwing up oversteer and understeer through different phases of the same corner.
The car had always had a degree of this, but the prodigious Verstappen had been able to paper of the cracks even as Sergio Pérez ended up as the canary in the coalmine. However, as the car ended up further and further down its development path, even the Dutchman couldn’t drive it, going 10 races without a win through the middle of last season.
The team said it had understood its issues and delivered restorative upgrades late in the year, and Verstappen closed the season with wins in Brazil and Qatar, but it would take the off-season to cure the fundamental problems.
Evidently that hasn’t happened.
Technical director Pierre Waché said after pre-season testing that “the car did not respond how wanted” and revealed that while improvements had been made, the gains weren’t as significant as hoped.
Conditions and track layouts have allowed the team to mask some of its problems early in the year, but Bahrain and its super abrasive surface exacerbated even minor handling issues, revealing the work the team still must do.
So far this season the RB21 has been only the third-quickest car in qualifying in a close battle with Mercedes to be next-best to McLaren.
Qualifying pace, season average
1. McLaren: +0.003 seconds
2. Mercedes: +0.259 seconds
3. Red Bull Racing: +0.286 seconds
4. Ferrari: +0.379 seconds
But its pace in Bahrain was truly dire, dropping it not only well off the pace of its fellow frontrunners but behind even Alpine after a superb lap from Pierre Gasly.
Qualifying pace, Bahrain Grand Prix
1. McLaren: fastest
2. Mercedes: +0.168 seconds
3. Ferrari: +0.334 seconds
4. Alpine: +0.375 seconds
5. Red Bull Racing: +0.582 seconds
Not every circuit will be as bad as Bahrain, but Japan also stands as outlier at which Verstappen made all the difference.
‘Flawless’ Piastri dominates in Bahrain | 00:43
DON’T MENTION THE WAR
It’s clear the RB21 isn’t the hoped-for improvement, and the team admits many problems have carried over from last season.
The question now is why the team couldn’t overcome its problems once they became obvious last year, even if, as Newey claimed, the broader technical team had downplayed them before Verstappen began struggling.
Team principal Christian Horner says one culprit stands out in his mind.
“I think the problems are understood,” he said per Autosport. “I think the problem is that the solutions with what we see within our tools compared to what we’re seeing on track at the moment aren’t correlating.
“I think that’s what we need to get to the bottom of. Why can we not see within our tools what we’re seeing on the circuit?
“When you end up with a disconnect like that you have to obviously unpick it.
“We’ve got a strong technical team that have produced some amazing cars over the last few years, and I’m confident that they’ll get to the bottom of this issue.
“But it’s literally the tool isn’t replicating with what we’re seeing on the track, and then it’s at that point — it’s like telling the time on two different watches.”
The tool Horner is referring to is the wind tunnel.
Red Bull Racing has used the same Bedford, UK, wind tunnel for its entire Formula 1 existence.
At a time several teams have upgraded their wind tunnel and associated infrastructure — most recently McLaren and Aston Martin — it’s beginning to show its age. Ground was broken shortly after the Second World War, and it was subsequently opened in the 1950s, sometime after which it came under the control of the British Ministry of Defence. Horner often describes it as a relic of the Cold War.
Despite its longevity, the decades-old wind tunnel has key issues the team has learnt to work around. One notable problem is that it throws out variable results depending on the weather outside, with cold weather a particular concern — and the off-season is during the northern winter, when it’s particularly cold in the UK.
“The problem that we have is that we’re at the end of a set of regulations where the gains are very, very marginal, and I think we’re seeing some of the shortcomings in our current tunnel,” he said.
“Primarily the wind tunnel has driven us in a direction that isn’t replicating what we’re seeing on track. Then you end up with a mishmash between what your tools are telling you and what the track data is.”
The good news is with 24 races on the calendar there’s plenty of track time with which the team can gather real-world data — of course at the expense of losing grand prix weekend to troubleshooting.
“Obviously now as we’re accumulating track data, it’s the track data that’s driving the solutions,” Horner said.
“I think it’s clear we understand what the problem is; it’s implementing the solution. It’s the entry phase into the mid-corner that needs addressing and giving him [Verstappen] the ability and grip and confidence that it takes to carry speed into entry of corners.
“That’s fundamentally an aero issue that we need to be able to give him that grip.”
‘What a muppet’ – Oscar & Lando banter | 01:18
VERSTAPPEN’S POSITION IS PRECARIOUS
But will that be enough to convince Verstappen?
After all, its new wind tunnel won’t be “for implementation” until 2027, which presumably means the 2028 car will be the first developed in new facilities.
That’s deep, deep into the new 2026 regulations, work on which has already started.
It also happens to be the final year of Verstappen’s contract, which the Dutchman has regularly suggested could also be the end of his career.
You could argue that Red Bull Racing has had no trouble building title-winning cars in its current wind tunnel, including under these regulations, but they were also all build under Newey’s supervision. The legendary designer has since decamped for Aston Martin, his departure coinciding almost exactly with RBR’s results decline.
Will the team’s current struggles eat away at Verstappen’s trust in the technical department?
And then of course there’s the matter of the power unit.
Next year also sees the introduction of a new motor that will have F1 cars powered equally by internal combustion and electrical energy.
It’s the first power unit the Red Bull company has taken in house, with Red Bull Powertrains designing the V6 turbo hybrid with some technical input from Ford.
But Horner had been one of the few proponents to argue F1 should consider ditching the new engine rules in favour of much simpler naturally aspirated V10, having taken that doomed position to a meeting of key stakeholders on Friday in Bahrain.
While the resolution was to stick with the new rules for at least three seasons, also agreed was the need to grant concessions to any manufacturer that finds itself with an underpowered power unit next year to try to avoid any one engine builder having a baked-in advantage for several seasons.
Horner hailed these concessions as the “most important” thing to come out of the meeting.
There have long been rumours that development on the Red Bull Powertrains engine has underwhelmed. Paddock speculation from as long ago as last year has put Mercedes ahead of the pack.
It all paints Red Bull Racing as a rather risky proposition for 2026.
It’s why there are rumours that the Verstappen camp, having seemed satisfied to remain at RBR until at least the end of 2026, could be open to entering this year’s driver market.
Mercedes looks like an attractive alternative. Not only is it rumoured to have the best engine, but it has competitive facilities and has shown this year that its reconstituted technical team can deliver results, its 2025 car looking comfortably second quickest behind McLaren.
Meanwhile, Aston Martin has state-of-the-art brand-new facilities, including a new wind tunnel; has been on a high-profile poaching spree, having attracted some of F1’s best technical and engineering minds to Silverstone; and has Newey on the books as the key overseer of its 2026 project.
Aston Martin will also take over from Red Bull Racing as the Honda works team next season. Though there have been rumours the Japanese marque could be a little undercooked after starting development late, having been unsure whether it would continue in the sport, Honda is said to have been a strong proponent of keeping next year’s rules unchanged, at least suggesting confidence that it’s on the right track.
It all puts a great deal of pressure on Red Bull Racing to prove it can solve its car problems, and it’ll need to do so rapidly to ensure it also doesn’t compromise preparations for next year’s car.
Because if one thing’s been made clear in the last year, it’s that right now the team needs Verstappen more than he needs the team.