Red Bull sporting director Laurent Mekies says he is confident the team can deliver a quicker car for Max Verstappen as the 2026 season progresses.
Verstappen has publicly criticized the new regulations and admitted he has considered stepping away from the sport, and his on-track form has suffered. For the first time since 2017 he has gone three consecutive races without a top-five finish; at Suzuka he was eliminated in Q2 and recovered to eighth in the Grand Prix.
With the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian rounds cancelled, April is free of races, giving Red Bull time to focus on simulations and wind-tunnel work. Mekies explained the team will use the break to feed observed data back into the simulator and tunnel and test sensitivities that cannot be explored during race weekends. He warned Miami will not be a miracle cure, but said the team expects to start introducing improvements there in early May and to identify the underlying issues in short order. He also stressed that the gap to the leaders remains substantial.
Mekies said the priority is to return cars that drivers can push hard so they can measure true performance. He added that producing a car Verstappen can exploit will also improve the driver’s mood, and confirmed there have been no discussions with Verstappen about his future beyond focusing on performance.
Verstappen has been outspoken about the current package. Red Bull sit sixth in the Constructors’ Championship and Verstappen is ninth in the Drivers’ standings after contesting a fifth consecutive title last year. At Suzuka he spent much of the race battling Alpine’s Pierre Gasly for seventh, and he pointed to battery deployment rules and an unpredictable balance as factors that hindered his progress, calling the situation unsustainable for the team.
Red Bull anticipated a tougher year with the new power unit developed with Ford, but Mekies believes the bigger problems are chassis and aero related rather than outright engine power. The team showed promise in Australia — Verstappen recovered from a Q1 crash and 20th on the grid to finish sixth, while Isack Hadjar qualified third — but they then endured setbacks in China, scoring no Sprint points and losing Verstappen in the Grand Prix to a coolant failure.
Mekies estimates the squad is roughly a second off the best cars and about half a second behind the leading Ferraris, and acknowledged that China represented a step back compared with the form seen in Australia. Formula 1 returns at the Miami Grand Prix on May 1-3, the season’s second Sprint weekend, where Red Bull hopes to begin narrowing the deficit.