Friday’s two practice sessions at the 2026 F1 São Paulo GP provided plenty of learning opportunities for Red Bull, as Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar worked to get to grips with the RB22 at the Autódromo José Carlos Pace.
FP1 got off to a difficult start for Verstappen, with the four-time World Champion reporting handling and downshift issues. The team made strides throughout the day as the Dutchman went on to finish third in both practice sessions, while Hadjar finished sixth and ninth, respectively.
With uncertain weather conditions and a potentially different forecast for the remainder of the weekend, Red Bull heads into Saturday with plenty of setup adjustments to make as both drivers look to improve their confidence in the RB22 ahead of Qualifying.
Gaining a better understanding of all three tyre compounds
Speaking in the print media zone, Head of Race Strategy Hannah Schmitz reflected on the team’s Friday, explaining that the focus was on evaluating all three tyre compounds, with Pirelli opting for a selection that was one step softer than last year.
“Yes, exactly, which has maybe been a little bit of a trend maybe recently that we’ve done similar things to Ferrari.”, Schmitz said.
“I think it was a very close call on which sessions you ran the hard and which session you ran the medium today, and I think all of the top teams kind of tested all three compounds because they are so similar, and it comes down a lot to kind of driver preference, team tendency and preference, and those are the kind of things we’re trying to get to the bottom of.”
“Today, obviously, the conditions today are quite different to what’s forecast for Sunday as well, so now we’ve got to try and kind of have a look at how we think that’s going to translate to what happens on Sunday, and I think that’s the difficult thing.”
More performance to extract from the RB22
Heading into Saturday, Schmitz acknowledged that both Verstappen and Hadjar want to make several changes overnight. Following a promising Friday, she expressed confidence that the team has identified the key areas to address.
“I think everyone agrees that there’s a lot of potential within the car, but with both drivers there are things that they want to look into and change overnight, but in a way that’s a good thing because that means we know what’s happening on the car and what we can address and there’s a lot of potential and optimism for the rest of the weekend.”
With Verstappen cutting his long run short, Schmitz explained that the team decided to end the run early, as it was no longer providing useful information.
“So it was just finding a lot of inconsistency in the long run, and we didn’t feel like it was helpful anymore. We weren’t getting the data we needed. We knew the things that we wanted to be looking at and changing overnight, so we just went straight into that.”
