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The 2026 regulations were always expected to disrupt Formula 1’s established order. For Red Bull, however, the change has been especially severe. The team entered the year as the outfit that had challenged for the 2025 Drivers’ Championship until the final stages, yet the first half of this campaign has instead been defined by reliability concerns, balance problems and uneven performance from one circuit to the next.
That difficult backdrop has also intensified speculation over Max Verstappen’s future. Red Bull’s position is therefore more complicated than a simple drop in competitiveness. The team must recover performance while also demonstrating to its leading driver that the problems affecting the RB22 can be addressed.
There have nevertheless been flashes of progress. Verstappen has delivered four podium finishes, Isack Hadjar has made a stronger impression than some expected, and the Austrian Grand Prix offered the clearest indication yet that Red Bull’s development programme may be moving in the right direction. As the team heads into the remaining 12 rounds, the half-term report is one of frustration, but not without reasons for cautious optimism.
For further context on the car’s weaknesses, Red Bull’s first-half problems have also been outlined in this analysis of Verstappen’s concerns over the RB22.
Verstappen had become accustomed to fighting for victory and regularly standing on the top step of the podium during the first half of this decade. Supported by a formidable Red Bull, the Dutchman completed a mighty run of four Drivers’ Championships. In 2026, that expectation has been replaced by a more patient search for opportunities.
He had to wait until the fifth round of the season to reach the podium. Compared with a significant part of his Formula 1 career, podium finishes have become a rarity rather than an expectation, and victories have not been available on a weekly basis.
Even so, Verstappen’s defining strength remains clear. He continues to extract the maximum from the car available to him, and that persistence has produced four top-three finishes so far. His best results are two second places, achieved in Austria and Hungary.
Austria represented his strongest opportunity to win. He recovered from a difficult qualifying session to place himself in contention, but ultimately crossed the line behind George Russell. The result did not deliver Red Bull’s first victory of the season, yet it showed that Verstappen could still convert a challenging weekend into a major points haul when the car gave him a platform to fight.
Red Bull’s long history of changing second drivers illustrates how demanding Verstappen can be as a team-mate. The current qualifying comparison is clear: Verstappen leads Hadjar by eight wins to three over one lap. However, the scoreline should not obscure the fact that Hadjar has performed better than some predictions suggested.
Red Bull’s difficulties have also affected Verstappen’s qualifying record. He has not secured a pole position this season, while several sessions have been particularly challenging. A crash in Australia and a Q2 exit in Japan were among the setbacks that interrupted his qualifying campaign.
He responded with front-row starts in Miami, Monaco and Belgium. Those results underline the difference between Verstappen’s overall consistency and the RB22’s lack of reliability as a performance package. When the car and circuit combination worked, he remained capable of placing it at the sharp end. The problem was producing that level of performance consistently.
Hadjar, meanwhile, made an immediate impression at the season opener by qualifying third. He has not matched that result since, although fifth-place grid positions in Monaco and Great Britain represented his next-best qualifying performances. Great Britain was particularly significant because Hadjar beat Verstappen over one lap.
That isolated result does not alter the overall picture, but it does reinforce the idea that Hadjar has brought genuine potential to a seat that has proved difficult for previous Red Bull team-mates. The question of whether he has ended the team’s second-seat curse remains open, but his first half has provided encouraging evidence rather than merely filling the other side of the garage.
The same 8–3 scoreline appears in the Grand Prix comparison. Verstappen’s record against team-mates remains outstanding, but Hadjar’s three victories in the race head-to-head require some qualification. Each came in a race where Verstappen failed to finish.
In China, Verstappen retired because of an ERS issue. In Monaco, he failed to get off the line at the start. In Great Britain, a rear wing fault caused his retirement. Hadjar therefore gained those three results through circumstances that prevented Verstappen from completing the race, rather than by overturning the Dutchman’s advantage in comparable finishing conditions.
The wider points picture is more representative of the season. Excluding retirements, both drivers have been in the points with reasonable consistency. Verstappen’s four podiums have lifted him to 109 points and sixth place in the standings. Hadjar has scored 68 points from 11 rounds, placing him eighth.
Hadjar has also endured his own reliability setbacks. He retired in Australia and Miami, meaning the Red Bull garage has had to manage performance limitations and race-ending problems on both sides. Verstappen’s higher total reflects his greater ability to turn opportunities into podiums, but Hadjar’s points tally confirms that his contribution has been meaningful during a difficult campaign.
Red Bull did not add to its tally of 130 Grand Prix victories during the first half of 2026. Still, Verstappen gave the team a significant reason to celebrate at its home event in Austria, held at the Red Bull Ring.
The setting was charged with expectation, with the grandstands filled by orange-clad supporters. Verstappen had crashed in qualifying, leaving himself with a recovery task rather than an easy route to a podium. He met that challenge in the opening stages of the race by dispatching Kimi Antonelli, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton.
Starting from fifth, he progressed to second. That advance was not simply the product of a strong qualifying position or a straightforward race. It was a demonstration of Verstappen’s ability to turn a compromised weekend into a result that carried far greater value for a team searching for momentum.
The victory remained out of reach. Verstappen came close to challenging Russell, but Red Bull’s strategy left him with too much work to do. He eventually finished 1.611 seconds behind the Mercedes driver. The narrow margin made the result feel both positive and frustrating: Red Bull had produced a competitive car in the right conditions, but it had not yet converted that performance into a win.
Even so, the team described the result as “extremely positive”, and that assessment reflected its wider importance. Austria offered visible evidence of the impact of Red Bull’s development work and gradual upgrades. More importantly, it showed Verstappen that the team may be able to return to winning ways sooner rather than later.
If one component has created the most serious headache for Red Bull, it is the rotating rear wing. The team developed its own version after Ferrari’s successful ‘Macarena’ wing, using the concept as one route to narrowing the gap to its competitors.
Instead, the component became associated with two of Verstappen’s most damaging incidents of the season. The first failure came in the final moments of qualifying for the Austrian Grand Prix. Verstappen lost control of his RB22 during a flying lap and was sent across the gravel into the barriers.
A similar incident occurred at the British Grand Prix. Verstappen spun out and missed what could have been a potential podium, with the rear wing’s closing behaviour subsequently placed under scrutiny. The consequences went beyond the loss of a single result. The failures affected qualifying and race performance, while also making the team reconsider whether the updated design could be trusted.
Following a thorough review, Red Bull reverted to a previous design in Belgium. The updated version was then set aside for testing, with the aim of bringing it back later in the season. That decision represented a pragmatic response to a component that was intended to improve competitiveness but instead contributed to two major setbacks.
Red Bull’s most pressing priority is both competitive and strategic: it must give Verstappen reasons to remain committed to his current deal, which stretches to the end of 2028. Several important personnel, including Adrian Newey, Helmut Marko and Gianpiero Lambiase, have already left or are set to depart the squad. Verstappen’s loss would be an additional and particularly significant blow.
The clearest way to avoid that outcome is to show measurable progress on the issues that have blighted the season. Balance problems, inconsistency from track to track and downshifts have all emerged as major concerns. Downshifts are an especially familiar source of frustration for Verstappen, who is well known for complaining about them.
Mercedes may currently be too far ahead for Red Bull to challenge immediately. The more realistic short-term target is to reduce the deficit to teams such as McLaren and Ferrari. Rapid improvements in that area would not erase the slow start, but they would demonstrate that the rebuild is producing results rather than merely consuming time.
Team Principal Laurent Mekies has already made clear that Red Bull is in a rebuilding phase. Rebuilding requires time, and that is precisely what the team may not have in abundance. The remaining schedule offers 12 rounds in which to turn encouraging signs into a sustained competitive trend.
On paper, Red Bull still possesses the essential pieces: a supremely talented number one driver, a promising sophomore team-mate, an experienced team boss and a flourishing power unit partnership with Ford. The first half of the season has shown that possessing those elements is not enough. They must operate together, and they must do so reliably.
The Austrian recovery suggested that the puzzle can still be assembled. The rear wing failures, inconsistent balance and difficult qualifying sessions showed how easily the picture can fall apart. Red Bull’s second half will therefore be judged less by one isolated podium than by whether the team can make its progress repeatable. For Verstappen, Hadjar and the wider organisation, the next 12 rounds are an opportunity to turn glimpses of hope into proof that the rebuild is genuinely underway.
He’s a software engineer with a deep passion for Formula 1 and motorsport. He co-founded Formula Live Pulse to make live telemetry and race insights accessible, visual, and easy to follow.