Red Bull’s difficult 2026 F1 season came under fresh scrutiny, when Team Principal Laurent Mekies addressed the inconsistency troubling Max Verstappen‘s car. The four-time World Champion had said in his Dutch media session in Hungary that a new problem seems to surface every single weekend following his qualifying spin.
The question was put directly to Mekies. Does he understand the core limitations of the package? Or has the car negatively surprised him too?
Mekies on Verstappen’s recurring F1 car issues
Mekies pushed back gently on the framing before laying out his own diagnosis.
“At first, I’m not really convinced that it is linked to a package or something else. I think we have been struggling to give the drivers a car to have a good balance with. Nonetheless, because it’s Max [Verstappen], because it’s Isack [Hadjar], they have very often managed to extract anyway the performance. But, on the tracks where we have managed to do that, we have seen an improved performance.
“So I think, very much to your point, I think it’s about consistency of the delivery of the performance and it’s been a topic for us this season and it’s probably where some of the potential improvement is in the second part of the year.”
That diagnosis from Mekies lines up with what Verstappen has said about his F1 car in recent weekends. At Silverstone, he pointed to a poor balance and top-speed problems he could not explain after a rough qualifying session. Two rounds later in Budapest, he was more specific. He said the team still needed to fix issues that cost performance over the course of a weekend, and sometimes even within a single race.
A fragile package exposed by damage
The Team Principal was asked to explain whether the sharp drop-off reflected a car that was hard to trust through changing conditions, or simply tyre and track evolution catching everyone out.
Mekies confirmed that Verstappen and Hadjar’s RB22 F1 cars.remain highly sensitive to small variables:
“I think our car has been very sensitive to a number of small factors since race one, and we have suffered a lot in the first part of the season as well. And, it’s enough that you pick up a bit of damage, let it be on gravel, on the kerbs, you get a different wind direction and everything is a little bit on the edge in terms of performance.
“And, not only do you probably pay a price for lap time but also it’s fair to say that it removes confidence to the driver so it’s what it is. So, it’s not a new topic but it’s something where probably we have more potential to extract.”
For Red Bull, the F1 season’s second half now hinges on whether Hadjar and Verstappen can convert signs of very good pace like in Austria into consistent results.
The diagnosis is clear enough: a car that rewards precision but punishes the smallest error. Whether Red Bull can narrow that margin before the year runs out remains the open question.
