The hills were alive with the sound of Formula 1 cars at the Austrian Grand Prix and while McLaren picked up another of its favourite things in the form of a one-two finish, for Red Bull it was more a case of ‘doh, oh dear’.
Max Verstappen was taken out at Turn 3 after qualifying only seventh while team-mate Yuki Tsunoda endured a miserable run to finish last of those left running at the end of the race, the only driver two laps down on winner Lando Norris.
Red Bull finds itself 255 points down on constructors’ championship leaders McLaren but also trails Mercedes and Ferrari, while in the past three races the Milton Keynes-based outfit has been outscored by Sauber. So, what is going wrong and what next for Christian Horner‘s squad?
Verstappen future in the air?
There was nothing Verstappen nor Red Bull could do about his early end to the team’s home race on Sunday. The Dutchman was punted by the late-braking Mercedes of Kimi Antonelli at the top of the hill on the opening lap and that was it, race over.
It means that he has lost more ground to the McLaren duo in the drivers’ standings and any faint hopes of a fifth title in a row are now surely extinguished.
George Russell is closing the gap in the battle for third in the table but most the talk is about whether Verstappen will stay with Red Bull, given its lack of performance this season. Even when it was deemed not to be the best car last season, he was able to wrestle laptime and race wins out of his machinery to ensure he picked up a fourth title, even when his team conceded the constructors’ standings to McLaren.
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But that hasn’t been a regular occurrence this term and rumours of a performance clause allowing Verstappen to seek a drive elsewhere if a certain championship position hasn’t been reached by a certain point of the season means that a move to Mercedes is again being stoked.
The exact details of the clause are unknown but it seems clear that it does indeed exist. If that clause isn’t met, then Verstappen is contracted through to the end of 2028 and Red Bull would undoubtedly ensure he remains part of its stable.
Yet looking past pure performance, there has been friction within the ranks in the past two years – not least between team principal Christian Horner and Verstappen’s father Jos – and although that has died down in more recent memory, such internal conflict very rarely completely dissipates.
There’s definitely no smoke without fire, so now it’s a waiting game to see how the picture is painted.
The second driver dilemma
Tsunoda’s race in Spielberg was just about as miserable as it gets for any driver who finishes an event: two laps down, twice making contact with a rival and a 10-second penalty as punishment for one of those.
A general lack of pace is something that has characterised Tsunoda since taking over the second seat alongside Verstappen, with his place at the team for next season far from set in stone. Horner‘s evaluation of the weekend on social media was as curt as Verstappen’s race: “With Yuki it was again not a great race, he had damage to the front wing, a penalty and so on. Unfortunately for us it was a weekend to forget.”
But with Liam Lawson failing in his two-weekend stint with the team and Sergio Perez’s form drastically dropping off in recent years, it is now time to accept that it is the car and not the driver that is the issue and that Verstappen is simply able to drive around the issues, to an extent.
So what can Red Bull do to turn its fortunes around in the short term? It’s hard to tell given the downhill path the team has seemingly been on in the past 18 months. While Ferrari and Mercedes have made progress even this term, there has been little to suggest Red Bull can get things in order for both sides of the garage.
More pain is likely for the rest of the campaign.
What will 2026 reset bring?
That steady decline will not give much enthusiasm that Red Bull will hit the ground running when the new technical regulations are enforced from next season, but there may be a positive to the reset.
Red Bull’s current car philosophy was set at a time when a number of departed personnel were still within the engineering team – Adrian Newey being the biggest name of all. Heads may be scratching trying to unpick any of the issues in the current machinery due to losing the minds that were responsible for the creation and so a blank canvas may well be the remedy needed.
Fresh ideas and a fresh concept that is known in its entirety by the workforce currently at the team’s Milton Keynes base could well present an opportunity for the team to return to the top of the standings when the cars hit the track for the first time in the January test. Simulator work will give its drivers an indication into how the car performs at an early stage, which will be something Verstappen takes into consideration when mulling over his future.
The big question mark, however, is around the power unit. Red Bull will run its own power unit for the first time next term in collaboration with Ford – a massive achievement but also a massive undertaking. How competitive that will be against the incumbents in Mercedes, Ferrari and Honda is yet to be seen.
Both Red Bull and Ford have the talent within their ranks to make it work but there will be caution, knowing how much Honda struggled when it initially joined the list of OEMs a decade ago.
