Red Bull's Max Verstappen thinks the narrow gaps between team-mates in 2026 are being helped by this generation of cars being easier to drive on the limit, with McLaren team boss Andrea Stella offering a different view.
At Zandvoort Liam Lawson qualified eighth, one tenth behind Verstappen, on a one-off outing for Red Bull to deputise for the injured Isack Hadjar. Meanwhile, reserve driver Yuki Tsunoda also impressed in Lawson's Racing Bulls car, conceding a similar gap to the team's regular driver Arvid Lindblad on the Japanese driver's first race weekend of 2026.
Asked whether those narrow gaps suggested drivers now have less opportunity to make the difference, the Dutchman replied: "Especially in qualifying, I think. It's a lot easier nowadays with these cars to find the limit, because in quite a few places you're also a bit down on battery. Everything becomes a bit easier to line up.
"I think that demonstrated it quite well this weekend compared to the previous cars. For me, that's not a surprise."
Verstappen didn't mean to diminish the work of his teammates, saying Lawson had done "a very solid job this weekend", while the New Zealander explained the current Red Bull felt much less on a knife-edge than its troubled predecessor.
But Verstappen did feel Zandvoort continued a year-long paddock-wide trend. "I think you see it already the whole season. Everyone is always within one tenth, two tenths. If you have a very bad qualifying, three tenths. The margins are always super small," he explained. "You can also see that with Yuki, he's right there straight away."
Liam Lawson, Racing Bulls
Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images
Verstappen's view isn't universally shared, though. McLaren chief Andrea Stella felt the current generation of cars was still difficult to drive, because the 2026 power unit regulations have added another layer of complexity on top of the usual driving requirements in the cockpit.
"I don't know about others, but these cars are classified by both our drivers as difficult cars to drive," Stella said. "Definitely, last year we could see much less scatter between the two drivers. Here when a driver is a bit on the back foot then this can be a large amount.
"They are difficult cars to drive for several reasons. At the start of the season, it was in the corners and then in the straights. In the corners because of the low grip, much less downforce, smaller tyres and in the straights because of the inconsistencies of the deployment or the fact that you may have a sudden superclip before braking and now you've lost your braking reference. Or sometimes the frustrating element is that you go on power earlier and now you're losing deployment later. So, there were several angles from which driving this year's car was more difficult.
While Stella conceded drivers and their engineers have become much more adept at handling the power units, he said the chassis related challenges are still intact. "Even if all teams have added downforce, it's very difficult for the drivers to predict what the problem is going to be in braking or whether or not the car will snap in traction," he pointed out.
"With the previous generation of cars there was much, much more load aerodynamically and much more grip from the tyres, and it was easier."
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