The mysterious issue plaguing Red Bull's car for Max Verstappen throughout this season cannot be completely cured anytime soon. Team principal Laurent Mekies has spoken out, acknowledging that the performance degradation occurring in every session and race is a complex problem that can only be fully resolved by 2027.
Over several race weekends, Verstappen has complained that his car becomes increasingly difficult to handle as the session progresses. The symptoms typically appear at the rear, as happened during qualifying at Monza. On that occasion, the four-time world champion called the RB22 a "car made of paper"—a sharp criticism illustrating the car's fragile performance at crucial moments.
Interestingly, Verstappen stressed that this complaint is nothing new. He claimed to have voiced the issue internally for years, even before the 2026 technical regulations made the car completely new. This raises a big question: why is this problem so persistent and does Red Bull finally understand the root cause?
When asked directly by Autosport, Mekies gave a rather blunt response. "I don't think we are going to explain what it is and how we are going to fix it," he said. "But Max is right, there is an element of car performance degradation that is happening through a session and through a race. He's also right in saying that it's not a new issue. We are not sleeping on it. We have been trying to tackle that in different ways."
Mekies described the issue as complex. "Otherwise, we would get to the bottom of it. But everyone is very constructive about it and we are trying to make small steps at the time to be able to finally get to the bottom of it," he added. Those small steps began to show in Madrid, where Red Bull tried to apply lessons from Monza. The problem did not occur, or at least not to the same extent.
"We had a couple of positive steps in that regard this weekend," Mekies said. "It will never be the full picture, but we certainly have, through pain, made progress into our understanding. We don't have all the solutions on the car yet, but I trust that we are in the right way. It will not be fast, so it's something that will probably take us through next year."
In other words, Mekies acknowledges what Verstappen had already hinted at: some problems simply cannot be fixed this season and require bigger changes to the design and chassis for 2027. Red Bull's limitations for the remainder of this year are partly due to the budget cap coming into play, the focus already shifting to 2027, and the fact that certain changes cannot be made to the RB22.
So, for now, Verstappen and Red Bull must live with the compromise. The road to full recovery is still long, and fans may have to wait until the 2027 season to see the best version of the Milton Keynes-based team.
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