Red Bull RB22 continues to struggle, trailing Max Verstappen’s car by 1.3 seconds per lap in Australia and China, according to Paceteq telemetry.
Mid‑season performance chasm
While Kimi Antonelli remains 110 points clear of Verstappen during the summer break, the Dutchman’s RB22 has yet to find a competitive rhythm. The 2026 season began with a built‑in deficit, primarily from a power‑unit critique before launch and a chassis that sat heavier than the grid mean. Peter Wache, Red Bull’s technical director, pointed out early mechanical gremlins that hampered steering feel and load perception, keeping the team from extracting the car’s full potential.
Car degradation threatens weekend consistency
Verstappen said he was “more affected by car degradation than tyre degradation” in Hungary, a phenomenon where the vehicle loses grip and responsiveness over a weekend and even during a single session. “We need to first find more overall performance and then fix our problems, where we sometimes just lose performance over a weekend, or even from the start of the race to the end,” he warned. “That is actually a big priority.”
In Budapest, the driver remarked that a new problem seems to emerge every weekend, echoing his earlier joke that sustaining setbacks would have him spending winter in Tibet as a Buddha.
Stability issues under the hood
Wache identified specific limits: corner entry instability and mid‑corner understeer. “Like with every racing car, we see limitations in how the drivers can use it, the load, and the balance,” he said. “The RB22 still suffers from stability on entry and understeer mid‑corner. We try to avoid those aspects by using mechanical tools.”
French rookie Pierre Hadjar echoed the sentiment. “Entry stability needs to be solved, and then we can improve the rest,” he added. He also noted that, once issues were corrected at the start of the season, the car’s overall performance began to surface, albeit at a slower pace than rivals.
Road to resilience
Verstappen summed the first half of the year in one word: “Tough.” He acknowledged some bright moments but stressed the need for solid, all‑round weekends. “We need to find more performance and not have these issues with the current package,” he insisted. The team’s progress has been incremental: from initial load deficits to mechanical fixes that have eliminated steering‑feel problems, yet the RB22 remains challenged by its weight and suspension under dynamic loads.
As the season moves toward its climax, Red Bull’s focus will be on shaving off the 1.3‑second gap and eliminating weekend deterioration. The technical crew’s next steps involve refining the chassis lightness and tightening the binding of the understeer vectors to regain the edge required to fight for championship points.
"