2026 Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 Team

[f1isgood]

Red Bull has made no progress at all in understanding, let alone fixing, why it has had no grip since the first lap of FP1. Its chief suspicion is it is temperature-related but that is about as far as it goes and Hadjar suggested the track layout was more exposing limitations with the car itself.
“We are on the edge of what we have as a package,” Hadjar said.
“We’re grip limited now. We just need more load everywhere.”

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/comp ... explained/

At least Hadjar is close to Max and that's very good news. He will likely also have ultimate pace of Max given how early he is in his driver development curve.

[Sergej]

wtf did they do with tyres ? good luck tomorrow

[Emag]

So obviously the 1.7s yesterday was overblown, but the car is not liking this track in any case. I think the longer corners are exacerbating the weaknesses. This track is full of them. Once again though, they're quite close with Mercedes from a straight-line perspective.

This same team gave Max a car that could challenge for the title in the second half of the season last year. At a time where everyone had given up and with limited resources. I still think they will turn it around at some point this season.

They didn't give him a car that could win every race and in proper circumstances that's the only way they could have hoped to do anything.

That McLaren and their drivers were pretty incompetent flatters the job Red Bull did. They didn't have a single dominant race even when they won their races.

In the end you cannot say with a straight face that Red Bull was quicker than McLaren on pure pace for more than 5 races all year last season at best.

I don't see any serious turnaround. When there's talk of potential and unlocking performance the story is always Mercedes in 2022. This upgrade or that upgrade will fix it and so on.

Sure the Monza upgrade last year was fantastic but it was likely a fluke with the ground effect cars.

Edit: RBPT is absolutely fantastic though.

RedBull hasn't had a dominant car since 2023 and the first 5 races of 2024. Dominance is not required for them to win. If the car is in the ballpark, Max will make the difference. If you're within a tenth, the most consistent driver can make the difference.

The car last year was good enough to put Max in that position from Monza onwards with the exception of Mexico. Otherwise they just wouldn't have won anything in the second half either. So people here should know when to give a little credit because what RedBull did last year, is nothing to scoff at. The driver is ultimately the one who has to deliver, but if the car remained as it was in the first half of the season, Max wouldn't have been able to do anything.

The potential is there for RedBull. They just need to do what they did last year and deliver some good upgrades into that car.

[Badger]

Red Bull has made no progress at all in understanding, let alone fixing, why it has had no grip since the first lap of FP1. Its chief suspicion is it is temperature-related but that is about as far as it goes and Hadjar suggested the track layout was more exposing limitations with the car itself.
“We are on the edge of what we have as a package,” Hadjar said.
“We’re grip limited now. We just need more load everywhere.”

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/comp ... explained/

At least Hadjar is close to Max and that's very good news. He will likely also have ultimate pace of Max given how early he is in his driver development curve.

Not likely, but it may not matter with these cars, they don't exactly push the driver.

[TNTHead]

wtf did they do with tyres ? good luck tomorrow
https://i.ibb.co/RT5ngHnt/CHN-post-Q.png

First timed lap in Q1 they ran on mediums. I think so they can evaluate this setup on the mediums.

[venkyhere]

RedBull hasn't had a dominant car since 2023 and the first 5 races of 2024. Dominance is not required for them to win. If the car is in the ballpark, Max will make the difference. If you're within a tenth, the most consistent driver can make the difference.

The car last year was good enough to put Max in that position from Monza onwards with the exception of Mexico. Otherwise they just wouldn't have won anything in the second half either. So people here should know when to give a little credit because what RedBull did last year, is nothing to scoff at. The driver is ultimately the one who has to deliver, but if the car remained as it was in the first half of the season, Max wouldn't have been able to do anything.

The potential is there for RedBull. They just need to do what they did last year and deliver some good upgrades into that car.

Unfortunately, he will not.
These regs are not about driving at the absolute limit, going 5kph faster through a corner or being the last to apply brakes or being the first to apply throttle at exit -- none of it 'counts' because it will use more energy. The drivers do not have much input (via buttons) other than 'overtake mode' about how the S/W is going to deploy. And the deployment mapping is set in the simulator and then gets refined in the FPs before Q and R. So if in quali, a driver decides 'now is the time to explore the limit with my skill' , it's useless, because the extra speed in a corner or going into a corner, doesn't 'agree' with the deployment map. My guess is, this is the reason Ferrari and Mclaren drivers suddenly make comments like 'battery isn't deploying' or 'battery isn't recharging' etc over the radio. The Mercedes always have a deployment map that consumes and recharges more energy than any of the teams, it's because their ICE produces more energy from teh same quantity of fuel, which in turn is because their now-made-legal ICE is illegal.

So these regs are not about 'driver skill' (probably only explores consistency aspect of a driver's repertoire during race) and the primordial 'feel of grip' by the seat of his pants is of much reduced importance. These regs are about how clever the engineers are. Nothing else.

[euv2]

As I was alluding to yesterday, the engine is not the issue. In fact it stacked up quite well to Merc today, despite Max complaining about deployment issues. The chassis is a bit of a dog though. It reminds me of the F14T in how it goes from understeer directly into oversteer in long medium speed corners.

Wow, I've just seen the telemetry and you're right. RBPT is even closer than Ferrari. Didn't use Max's lap cause his telemetry is really bad.







The goal should be to have a better chassis than Ferrari.

[Valeo]

The question is, if it's an inherent issue or really "just" a lack of downforce.
From the onboard it looked really tough but we have also seen similar partly during 2024/25 albeit not as bad.

[euv2]

Max said it's tough to build a reference lap, so there's definitely some balance problems where he can't predict what the car will do when he pushes a bit more but still the no.1 issue is just lack of downforce.

[pantherxxx]

Realistically, we are around 1 second slower in pace than Mercedes when the setup isn’t messed up. I think about 0.4 seconds of that comes from the engine, purely because of the compression-rate trick. That should disappear from the Hungarian GP onward, because it will be completely banned, as far as I understand.

The other 0.6 seconds could simply be due to the car being overweight. That should also be solvable. If that happens, the gap could be closed for the second part of the season, and then Red Bull could even out-develop Mercedes, just like they did last year.

And last year Mercedes were bringing upgrades to their car until October, so it’s not like they just stopped development — Red Bull simply did a better job.

[upsidedowntoast]

Pace seems decent now.
Onboard the car is very sketchy

Pole mercedes went ~0.5s slower than SQ3 yesterday, probably due to hotter track temps
RB22 went ~0.25s faster than SQ3 yesterday, despite the hotter track temps.
So what was a 1.7s gap yesterday, became a 1s gap, by 'erasing' 0.5+0.25 ~= 0.7s. As I was saying yesterday, this is the most that can be expected by going from a 'very poor' car setup to a 'decent' setup.
That 1s gap (PU+aero) is always going to be there unless things like weight reduction & performance updates to PU and chassis happen.

Hotter track temps and the fact that Russell was on cold tyres, coming off some kind of car issues, with only one attempt. The real gap would have probably been 0.2-0.3s off sprint pole.

I think about 0.4 seconds of that comes from the engine, purely because of the compression-rate trick.

I think that's a fairly optimistic take. Toto would have absolutely used his political power if he was sitting on a 0.4s advantage. (The June 1st proposal could have been killed, even if all the other teams voted for it, if either the FIA or FOM voted against it, and Toto has connections.)

[f1isgood]

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/comp ... explained/

At least Hadjar is close to Max and that's very good news. He will likely also have ultimate pace of Max given how early he is in his driver development curve.

Not likely, but it may not matter with these cars, they don't exactly push the driver.

That's a valid point. The drivers are barely on the limit and ultimately Hadjar may never need to be as fast. This causes an artifical compression of driver skill.

[f1isgood]

So obviously the 1.7s yesterday was overblown, but the car is not liking this track in any case. I think the longer corners are exacerbating the weaknesses. This track is full of them. Once again though, they're quite close with Mercedes from a straight-line perspective.

This same team gave Max a car that could challenge for the title in the second half of the season last year. At a time where everyone had given up and with limited resources. I still think they will turn it around at some point this season.

They didn't give him a car that could win every race and in proper circumstances that's the only way they could have hoped to do anything.

That McLaren and their drivers were pretty incompetent flatters the job Red Bull did. They didn't have a single dominant race even when they won their races.

In the end you cannot say with a straight face that Red Bull was quicker than McLaren on pure pace for more than 5 races all year last season at best.

I don't see any serious turnaround. When there's talk of potential and unlocking performance the story is always Mercedes in 2022. This upgrade or that upgrade will fix it and so on.

Sure the Monza upgrade last year was fantastic but it was likely a fluke with the ground effect cars.

Edit: RBPT is absolutely fantastic though.

RedBull hasn't had a dominant car since 2023 and the first 5 races of 2024. Dominance is not required for them to win. If the car is in the ballpark, Max will make the difference. If you're within a tenth, the most consistent driver can make the difference.

The car last year was good enough to put Max in that position from Monza onwards with the exception of Mexico. Otherwise they just wouldn't have won anything in the second half either. So people here should know when to give a little credit because what RedBull did last year, is nothing to scoff at. The driver is ultimately the one who has to deliver, but if the car remained as it was in the first half of the season, Max wouldn't have been able to do anything.

The potential is there for RedBull. They just need to do what they did last year and deliver some good upgrades into that car.

Ultimately they lost the title.

If you want to close and overtake 100 point gap and that too in 9 races you better have a dominant car OR a never ending supply of miracles. Oscar and Lando and McLaren can only give you so much.

Red Bull in retrospect looked to have thrown everything at last year instead of looking at the medium and long term prospects of remaining a top team.

Thats a terrible mistake. They might eventually catch up but there's zero evidence they will match Mercedes at any point in the near future.

As it stands the chassis is simply not good enough. They will always be behind.

Doing what McLaren did in 23/24 is an extreme outlier event. It's absolutely not the norm (see Merc/Ferrari the last four years) and expecting Red Bull to reach that stage would be wishful thinking at best and being delusional at worst.

[Valeo]

I doubt what happened last year plays a big role in what we see today and in hindsight I'm glad they tried everything possible. To critcize them for trying isn't fair imho.
Mclaren stopped their development mid season, Ferrari even sooner and neither will come close winning this championship unless Mercedes fumbles big time. Not even one of the smaller teams that put every effort into 2026 made more than a decent impression.
It was always going to be a transition year for Red Bull.

[Badger]

As I was alluding to yesterday, the engine is not the issue. In fact it stacked up quite well to Merc today, despite Max complaining about deployment issues. The chassis is a bit of a dog though. It reminds me of the F14T in how it goes from understeer directly into oversteer in long medium speed corners.

Wow, I've just seen the telemetry and you're right. RBPT is even closer than Ferrari. Didn't use Max's lap cause his telemetry is really bad.

https://postimg.cc/MMcDs0g1

https://postimg.cc/9whLrRNZ

https://postimg.cc/4Kp2vRHd

The goal should be to have a better chassis than Ferrari.

I'll say this much, if you put the RBPT engine in the Ferrari chassis it would be a strong contender with Merc.