While Red Bull Racing had a challenging start to the 2025 season, Max Verstappen was ultimately able to mount an impressive comeback and finish the year just 2 points behind eventual Drivers' Champion, Lando Norris.
Heading into 2026, there was a lot of excitement to see what the team's collaboration with Ford on its engine would deliver. As we've seen from the first few races, it's a car that's barely able to fight in the midfield. As a result, Verstappen's hopes of a fifth Championship are rapidly diminishing.
However, it's not the engine that's the problem.
Multiple outlets are reporting that the Red Bull Powertrains/Ford engine is better than Ferrari and on par with Mercedes. The issue is the chassis, which appears to be the worst-designed car in the team's history.
The RB22 is hugely overweight and, in terms of aerodynamics, the car is at least 8 - 9 tenths slower than Ferrari's title challenger. Many of the significant changes needed to become competitive likely can't be implemented until 2027, and by that point, Red Bull may be even further behind its closest rivals.
Much has been said about Verstappen triggering his exit clause, leaving Red Bull and potentially the sport as a whole. His teammate, Isack Hadjar, has called the car "terrible," explaining, "The only positive right now is that we can drive the car fast, but we have no lead on how we can make a fast one. We have a good power unit. The engine’s good. It is just the chassis side is terrible, just slow in the corners."
Some work can be done on the car between now and the Miami Grand Prix, which should be beneficial to multiple teams after the U.S.'s war with Iran led to the cancellation of Grand Prix races in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Red Bull Team Principal Laurent Mekies recently addressed their struggles when he said, "I think it’s a combination of underlying performance and a layer of us not being able to extract enough from the package and to give something Max and Isack can push with."
“I’m not suggesting that it’s set up tuning, I’m just saying there is something we are wrestling with that car that adds to our underlying lack of performance."
“Now, trying to solve this sort of complex issues and trying to understand complex limitations is our core business," the Frenchman continued. "So as much as it feels bad when you are at the back of the top teams right now, that’s precisely what the whole company is set up to do, to get to the bottom of complex limitations like that, and bring development that can mitigate them and improve."
Stay tuned for more on Red Bull's woes—and Verstappen's F1 future—as we have it.