Red Bull Racing would no longer believe in the RB22 project. Max Verstappen‘s car for the 2026 F1 season only completed three races, but each weekend managed to perform even more poorly than the weekend before. In Japan, Verstappen again fell more than a second per lap short of the Mercedes W17, and was also slower than the Alpine of Pierre Gasly.
As a result, the Limburger did not get further than eighth position at Suzuka on pure speed. According to Verstappen, he is now part of a midfield team, instead of the top team that Red Bull was in 2025. He said that after the race in Japan, when he complained about being slower than Gasly.
“I mean, that’s not something negative compared to Alpine, because I think they’re doing a good job. It’s just that we’re not where we would like to be, but at the moment I feel like we’re more involved in the midfield battle than we are competing up front.”was Max’s painful assessment of his 2026 F1 car.
And Verstappen would not be the only person within Red Bull Racing who is completely done with the RB22. Teammate Isack Hadjar also spoke out very critically after the third race of the year, with the Frenchman making it clear that his car was slow and difficult to drive. And within Red Bull there are even more people who no longer have confidence in the new car.
According to Ralf Bach, journalist from F1 Insider with good sources within Red Bull, the Austrian team would experience problems on several fronts this season. Some of these problems are with the engine, but a lot goes wrong especially with the chassis. Bach says that some team members have so little confidence in the RB22 that they have indicated internally that they want to throw this concept in the trash and design a new one.
This would be disastrous for the budget cap and future updates. However, this option would be seriously considered, because there are doubts whether the current version of the RB22 can even make up for the deficit this year. And that now begs the question: should technical director Pierre Waché be fired after his umpteenth failure at Red Bull?
