The team has begun a distant new era far removed from Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren, and heads into the break without wins or pole positions, but the recent evolution of the RB22 shows that the chassis, power unit, and adaptation to the regulations must be analyzed separately.
Red Bull arrived at the 2026 Formula 1 summer break with a statistic that would have been nearly unimaginable during the years it dominated the sport: after 11 Grands Prix, there had been no victories and no pole positions.
They have 177 points in the Constructors’ Championship, compared with 379 for Mercedes, 307 for Ferrari and 220 for McLaren. The team sits in fourth place. Its four podiums were achieved by Max Verstappen, while Isack Hadjar is still chasing his first top-three finish.
But reducing the fall to simply a “bad car” would be simplistic.
What happened in 2026 runs deeper. The regulation change pulled the team out of the technical environment in which it had developed much of its notable advantages over the years. The RB22 was born under different aerodynamic concepts and, for the first time, Red Bull also began producing its own power unit in partnership with Ford.
In other words, Milton Keynes had to start simultaneously a new car and a new engine project.
And the first months showed that not all of these pieces matured at the same speed.
The downturn of 2026 didn’t start exactly in 2026
There’s an important nuance when comparing to the past.
Red Bull did not finish 2025 as the best F1 team. It was only third in the Constructors’ standings, with 451 points, behind McLaren and Mercedes. But that classification concealed an impressive recovery: Verstappen won six of the last nine races and finished the Drivers’ World Championship just two points behind the champion.
Therefore, the expectation for 2026 was not necessarily a continuation of a dominance that had already ended.
It was the idea that the team could transfer to the new generation the technical capability it had demonstrated during the latter half of 2025.
Even the tests began with an interesting contrast.
The new Red Bull Ford pleasantly surprised. Pierre Waché described the work done by the engine division as “remarkable” and highlighted that Red Bull had built a power unit from scratch in roughly three and a half years. At the same time, the technical director already placed the team only as the fourth force at that moment, behind Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren, and identified the car’s balance as an area that needed to evolve.
That was a first indication of what was to come.
In Australia, Verstappen finished only sixth and Hadjar retired. In China, the Dutchman suffered an ERS failure and did not complete the race, while Hadjar finished eighth. In Japan, Verstappen came home eighth and the Frenchman 12th. After the first three events, Red Bull had just 16 points and sat sixth in the constructors’ standings.
More important than the results were the symptoms.
Verstappen complained about the engine, the balance, understeer and oversteer. Hadjar was not satisfied either. Laurent Mekies was particularly careful in explaining the situation after Japan: there wasn’t a single area that could be pointed to as the cause of the problems.
That perhaps is the key to understanding Red Bull of 2026.
There wasn’t a dominant fault.
There were several small deficiencies acting simultaneously.
The engine turned into the easiest explanation, but not necessarily the correct one
The debut of the Red Bull Ford naturally drew enormous attention.
For years, Red Bull had bought or used power units produced by other manufacturers. In 2026, it effectively became a full-fledged constructor, building the car and the engine within the same project.
It was reasonable to imagine that the biggest challenge would lie right there.
The first months revealed a more complex reality.
Problems existed. Verstappen retired in China due to an ERS-related fault. Hadjar faced power and deployment difficulties on several occasions. In Monaco, he complained during the race about a lack of power and transmission problems. In Canada, he also faced issues during the Sprint.
But that does not mean the Red Bull Ford power unit was the main reason for the loss of competitiveness.
Before Hungary, Verstappen openly praised the work of the engine project, saying that what the engineers had designed before the season had largely borne out on the track. Internally, the reading was that the power unit had started better than one would expect from a new manufacturer.
The problem is that 2026 made the engine, energy recovery, deployment, chassis and aerodynamics even more interdependent.
A straight-line speed deficiency can stem from power, but also from the amount of drag the car must carry. A weakness in energy recovery can alter electrical availability elsewhere in the lap. An unstable car can force the driver to compromise entry and exit of corners, affecting the entire energy cycle.
For this reason, Red Bull itself avoids attributing its situation exclusively to the engine.
And Verstappen offered perhaps the simplest diagnosis before Silverstone.
According to him, there isn’t a single region where the RB22 is weak. In some situations it lacks low-speed performance; in others, high-speed. There are also balance and setup issues.
Barcelona made that particularly evident.
Red Bull knew before the weekend that a circuit with a long straight and fast corners would expose some of its weaknesses. Verstappen qualified fifth and Hadjar sixth. In the race, they finished in fourth and sixth respectively.
After the race, the team’s assessment was that there were still about four or five tenths to gain to challenge for victory on that kind of track.
In Monaco, on the other hand, Hadjar finished fourth, his best result of the year.
The differences between these circuits help to show why labeling the problem as simply “engine” or “aerodynamics” would be misleading.
The RB22 began the year with a limited operating window. Depending on the combination of cornering speed, aerodynamic load, available energy and track characteristics, its limitations appeared in different ways.
Verstappen sharpens the picture, but Hadjar shows that the car isn’t just a creation for Max
Another element makes Red Bull’s reading particularly interesting.
Verstappen remains capable of delivering results above expectations on certain weekends.
He has 109 points and sits sixth in the World Championship. Hadjar has 68 and sits eighth. The Dutchman leads the intra-team head-to-head by 8-3 in qualifying and by exactly 8-3 in races.
Also, Verstappen is responsible for Red Bull’s four podiums: third in Canada, second in Austria, third in Spa and second in Hungary.
It is tempting to conclude, therefore, that the four-time champion is simply masking a car far worse than his results suggest.
There is some truth to that, but Hadjar prevents the analysis from ending there.
The Frenchman isn’t completely lost with the RB22.
After a rocky start, Hadjar began a fairly solid run: fifth in Canada, fourth in Monaco, sixth in Barcelona, sixth in Austria, fifth in Silverstone, sixth in Spa and again sixth in Hungary.
In Silverstone, he even qualified two places ahead of Verstappen. His performance was later hampered by a front wing issue that cost a huge amount of aerodynamic load; after replacing the component, his times improved by almost two seconds.
Hadjar also acknowledged before the holidays that the RB22 isn’t an easy car, but said he could understand it and extract its potential with much more consistency than at the start of the season. His point of reference is telling too: he believes he performs well on a flying lap, but sees a much larger difference in Verstappen’s race management.
This helps separate car from driver.
The RB22 has real limitations.
Verstappen manages to compensate for some of them better than Hadjar, especially over race distance.
But Hadjar’s recent form also shows that the car isn’t simply an impossible machine to drive for anyone other than the four-time champion.
It’s a car that started poorly and is gradually widening its operating window.
The difference between the drivers remains relevant, but it does not explain the 202-point gap separating Red Bull and Mercedes.
Nor does it seem right to credit racing operations as the primary cause.
The team made mistakes and suffered technical issues, especially at the season’s start, but there were weekends when it performed very well without having the fastest car. In Spa, for example, Hadjar came from the back of the grid to sixth place with the help of an aggressive strategy, while Verstappen qualified second—also aided by a tow from his teammate—and finished on the podium.
Execution can extract more from the package.
It cannot turn this package into something it is not yet.
Austria showed that Red Bull might already have found a way
If the first three races represent the season’s worst snapshot, Austria represents the most important one.
Before the Spielberg Grand Prix, Red Bull delivered a substantial upgrade package to the RB22, with changes to the floor, rear suspension, rear region, wing, exhaust, sidepods and engine cover. Part of it aimed at performance; another part sought to improve reliability and cooling.
The jump was significant.
Mekies stated that Red Bull had started the season more than a second off the pace, reduced that gap to about half a second with the Miami package, and, in Austria, reached the region of the last tenth. It was the team’s own estimate, not a universal measure applicable to every circuit, but it helps visualize the development trajectory.
Verstappen finished the race in second, just 0.3 seconds behind Russell.
It was the first moment in 2026 when Red Bull really seemed capable of winning a race on pace.
Hadjar finished sixth.
Silverstone interrupted Verstappen’s sequence with a retirement due to balance and wing issues, but the car’s speed continued to show. In Spa, he returned to the podium. In Hungary, he finished second again.
That snapshot is important.
In the first seven races, Verstappen had earned only one podium.
In the last four before the break, he climbed to the podium three times.
That doesn’t mean Red Bull has caught up with Mercedes.
It means it stopped looking permanently stuck behind the four leading teams.
There’s another revealing detail.
In Spa, Verstappen admitted that the RB22 was in a good window and reasonably balanced, but still complained about straight-line speed. His second place in qualifying also depended significantly on the tow provided by Hadjar.
In other words: even during the resurgence, the limitations did not disappear.
They simply became smaller.
And Hungary confirmed that trend. Verstappen started fourth and finished second, but Norris won with a 15.080-second advantage. Red Bull managed to place a car between McLaren and Mercedes in the final results without showing the pace to control the race.
That exact margin remains what separates a recovering team from a championship contender.
Mercedes had eight wins and ten pole positions in the first 11 rounds.
Red Bull had none.
So, what really happened to Red Bull?
The answer starts with what didn’t happen.
There is not enough evidence to claim that Red Bull simply erred with the engine.
The Red Bull Ford had reliability and energy-management problems, as one would expect from a completely new project, but its initial performance was judged internally to be better than the car’s actual results.
It would also be too simplistic to blame only the chassis.
The RB22 was born with balance problems, a restricted operating window and deficiencies that varied between low and high speeds. However, Austria, Spa and Hungary show that the base is capable of developing.
The operation also does not explain everything.
And Verstappen, although continuing to extract more from the car than Hadjar in most weekends, cannot alone erase differences of several tenths.
What happened was a combination.
The regulation change erased part of the knowledge that had sustained Red Bull’s top teams in the previous cycle. At the same time, the team took on for the first time full responsibility for its own power unit. Chassis, aerodynamics, energy management and engine had to grow up together, and they did not mature at the same pace.
While Mercedes started 2026 with a package already close to its ideal window, Red Bull spent the early races trying to figure out which problems to tackle first.
That initial difference proved costly.
After 11 races, there are 202 points separating Mercedes in the Constructors’ World Championship and 110 between Verstappen and Antonelli in the drivers’ standings.
But there is a second half to this story.
The RB22 that finished second in Austria, third in Spa and second in Hungary is no longer as competitive as the car that finished eighth in Japan.
Red Bull has found performance.
The challenge after the break will be to make it less dependent on the circuit and on Verstappen’s exceptional talent.
To truly return to the group of teams capable of contending for championships, it must broaden the RB22’s operating window, reduce its high-speed and straight-line weaknesses, continue refining Red Bull Ford’s energy management and convert the progress of the upgrades into reproducible performance.
The new era did not destroy Red Bull.
It destroyed some of the technical certainties that the team had spent years building.
The first half of 2026 was devoted to figuring out how to replace them.
The final stages indicate that the team has finally begun to find some answers.
