Red Bull drivers Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar reviewed a tough Austin Sunday on media day ahead of the 2026 F1 Mexico City GP.
At the start of the race, the clutch/start issues they have faced throughout the season surfaced once more. Verstappen, despite having the softs fitted, got a much worse launch than polesitter Kimi Antonelli who was on mediums. In fact, Charles Leclerc passed him into the esses.
From P3 on the grid, Isack Hadjar had an even worse start and fell to 5th.
In the race itself, Red Bull went quite different from anyone else on Max Verstappen’s side, choosing a S-S-M strategy, while Isack Hadjar went for the S-H one. The aggressive call with the four-time World Champion did not work, losing P2 to Charles Leclerc on Lap 49. If the VSC had not appeared to clear Bottas’ car, Lewis Hamilton would have caught and probably passed him before the end.
Meanwhile, the driver of car #6 had to accept 6th because he was in the wrong throttle map for the second stint, costing him significant lap time when on the hards, the best tyre at COTA.
Max Verstappen says many factors led to a disappointing Sunday at COTA as they look to bounce back at the 2026 F1 Mexico City GP
Speaking in his print media session on Thursday, the 73-time race winner explained that a variety of reasons led to such a disappointing showing. After winning in Malaysia and Singapore, Mercedes and Ferrari had better race pace in Austin last Sunday.
Generally, Red Bull are the benchmark team on strategy in Formula 1. However, their tyre calls with car #3 at Circuit of the Americas were the wrong ones.
“It was a lot of different things, of course the strategy, I think we could have done a better job with the tyre choice.
“But again, I think not many people expected it to be the hard tyres that would be that competitive because they haven’t really been in the last few races, so that’s something that can happen.
“At the same time we also had a lot of other little issues on the car side, engine side that contributed to time loss, so when you add all those things together it’s enough time loss. That for sure hurt our overall performance, but that’s what it is.
“We just need to try and understand how it happened, why it happened, and of course then learn from the strategy that we gave in Austin. Normally we’re always very good at these things, but sometimes you have a weekend where it’s a learning moment where you can do better.”
Difficult starts to continue
The F1 Mexico City GP features the longest run down to Turn 1 on the 2026 calendar, and it could be a big issue for Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar. With Red Bull continually having poor starts throughout the season, Laurent Mekies admits the fundamental start problems cannot be resolved until 2027.
The Dutchman outlined how tricky the rest of the year will be off the line.
“It’s not going to be easy, it’s as simple as that.
“It’s nothing that I can change from my procedure, we’ve tried already a lot of things and it’s so far not been good enough, it’s not bad, but it’s not good enough.”
For Isack Hadjar in his own print media session, he focused on the positives as the starts have made progress — at times — since Melbourne and Shanghai.
Nonetheless, he is also aware they will carry these limitations until the final round in Abu Dhabi. Next year will be the attempt at fully fixing them.
“We keep pushing on that end.
“It’s something we’ve been working on and there have definitely been big improvements if you look at the first couple of races of the year. And now we’re at a point where it goes a bit up and down, but we’re aware of that and we need to work with what we have until the end of the year.
“But the good thing is that the tough thing is going fast on track, I think we’re doing it.
“I think we also got it a bit wrong on the strategy, it’s been reviewed. And yeah, we move forward.
“But yeah, I wouldn’t say there are silly things, I would say there are important little things that we don’t do well. That’s it.”
Red Bull lacked flexibility on strategy in 2026 F1 Austin race, says Isack Hadjar
While the Milton Keynes-based squad did split the number of stops and tyre strategy across the cars, Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar were both left to rue theirs at the end.
At the previous triple-header, the soft tyre was the best race one. However, it was the hard in COTA. Verstappen never used it, leading to high degradation on both soft stints, with the medium needing to go 26 tours in the last part of the race.
Meanwhile, Hadjar lost race time as he needed to let the Dutchman through on Lap 23; his pace versus medium-shod Antonelli was really solid and comparable before that. He was on the one-stop and switched to hards like the race winner would.
Isack Hadjar says the team lacked flexibility last Sunday.
“I think we were really, as a team, probably not open-minded enough to the one-stop strategy.
“In a way, we were very convinced the softer compound was working better and maybe we thought the deg was higher than it actually was, once you start with this.
“Then we put ourselves in a difficult situation because I had a good pace on the soft. I didn’t want to pit too early. At the same time, we don’t want Max to lose his race time because he’s on another strategy.
“In the end, that was confusing because if we were all on the one-stop, everyone would have been happy.”
Heading into the 2026 F1 Mexico City GP, Red Bull sit 3rd in the Constructors’ Championship. They are tied on points with McLaren.
