Red Bull Racing’s start to the new Formula 1 regulations has been anything but encouraging, with the sport’s most dominant team in recent years blighted by too many problems.
Red Bull’s season is mimicking that of Mercedes’ in 2022, in a tale of caution as to how quickly the mighty can fall.
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Formula 1’s new regulatory cycle was always tipped to catch one of the sport’s frontrunners out, and it probably comes as no surprise that the team was Red Bull.
Not only had Red Bull been in a slump on the track – by the team’s lofty championship-winning standards – in the two years after its dominant 2023 display when it won 21 of 22 Grands Prix, but it also lost several key personnel.
Since 2023, the team said farewell to Rob Marshall, Will Courtenay, Jonathan Wheatley, Adrian Newey, Christian Horner and Helmut Marko. And that’s just six of the big names that have already departed.
It’s been a rebuilding process for Red Bull, one that the new team principal Laurent Mekies has handled admirably. And, perhaps more importantly, with a no-blame culture.
Instead of bringing in outside personnel, Mekies has drawn on the strength behind those people, those who didn’t have the big selling-point titles and has promoted from within.
But that hasn’t been Red Bull’s biggest challenge this season.
This season, Red Bull’s RB22 and Racing Bulls’ VCARB 03 are not only all-new machines, but they’re also powered by Red Bull’s inaugural Formula 1 engine that was designed in conjunction with Ford.
Impressively, it was declared to be the best internal combustion engine of the five PU manufacturers. Worryingly, it isn’t the best power unit on the grid given there are more parts to today’s power units than just the ICE.
Red Bull, though, does not have an ADUO [Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities] to improve the engine as, according to the FIA’s findings, it has the best ICE.
And yet Max Verstappen, with his tally of 48 pole positions and 71 Grands Prix, has yet to add to either stat this season. Nor has his new teammate Isack Hadjar.
Verstappen has four podium finishes in 11 Grands Prix, while Hadjar has one near miss from Monaco. It has left Red Bull fourth in the standings on 177 points, with less than half of Mercedes’ 379.
So where has it gone wrong? Probably the best driver on the grid with the best ICE, a young hot-shot teammate, an engineer as a team principal, and four world titles in what feels like months ago?
Red Bull has, in the words of former Ferrari engineer Rob Smedley, fallen foul of “too many basic problems”.
Every weekend Verstappen is complaining about downshifts this, downshifts that. In Hungary, where he finished second, he still wasn’t happy with the RB22.
“The car is completely ****ed,” he declared over the team radio.
He has complained about his seat, about his energy deployment, too much understeer, too much oversteer, and the car’s balance.
And he’s not alone.
While Hadjar has grumbled several times over the radio, his most notable bleat was in Monaco as he chased a podium finish.
He told the team that “something is going to explode”, before later adding “oh my god, why does it have to be so difficult!”
But even Red Bull’s downshift and balance issues aren’t its biggest problem.
Although Red Bull has closed the gap on the frontrunners with its in-season upgrades, those updates were in competition with the changes rivals made. It was a case of one step forward, one step back depending on which team brought new parts to the track.
But it’s not leading the charge.
When Red Bull introduced a revised diffuser and a ‘Macarena’ rear wing, it was more a case of adapting other teams’ designs than being at the forefront.
Red Bull, once the team that rivals drew inspiration from, has fallen behind in design inspiration.
But worst yet is the potential loss of Max Verstappen.
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The four-time world champion has yet to commit his future to Red Bull, at least publicly, with multiple sources telling PlanetF1.com that he has been in negotiations with McLaren.
Last year, Verstappen declared as Formula 1 headed into its summer break that it was “time to basically stop all the rumours” about his future with Red Bull it had “always been quite clear that I was staying anyway”.
This year, there’s been no such confirmation.
Committed to Red Bull? “I said there’s nothing to say.”
Asked if he wanted to stay at Red Bull next season, he again gave nothing away.
“I don’t want to go say yes and no, and this and that about my future,” he replied. “I said already many times that if there was something new, I would say it myself.”
But while he did later call Red Bull his “second family” and spoke of “loyalty”, he refused to shut down the McLaren rumours.
His dissatisfaction, highlighted with every radio rant, has kept the speculation in the headlines.
It also has Mekies admitting to PlanetF1.com and other accredited media that no one at Red Bull is happy with the team’s performances.
“Don’t count on me to say that we are satisfied, because we are not,” he said as F1 went into the summer break. “We will not be satisfied until we go back to having a race car that has the pace to win on merit.”
Max might want to see that ‘win on merit’ before he signs up for F1 2027.
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Originally published by Planet F1 —
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