Red Bull Handed Stinging Assessment After Winless F1 2026 So Far

Rob Smedley, former Ferrari race engineer, has handed Red Bull a mid-season rating of five out of ten in F1 2026. The Milton Keynes squad has struggled with "quite big" issues every single weekend, preventing them from scoring a win so far.

The harsh assessment comes after Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar repeatedly reported problems with the RB22. Verstappen, in particular, has been vocal about the car's behaviour over the first 11 race weekends, citing balance issues, inconsistent race pace, and power unit troubles.

2026 marks Red Bull's debut with its own power unit developed with Ford. However, the engine has not lived up to expectations. Speaking on the High Performance Racing podcast, Smedley said: "Red Bull should be doing so much better."

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"They've had too many basic problems. Like Max says, there's a different problem every weekend," Smedley continued. "It's always something quite big, not just a contained reliability or operational issue. Because of that, I'm going to give them a five."

Despite the struggles, Red Bull have shown flashes of brilliance. At the Hungarian Grand Prix, Verstappen fought from P6 to P2, but qualifying exposed yet another issue when a rear-wing failure caused him to spin in Q3. The team has found it hard to build momentum, alternating between strong and disastrous weekends.

With such persistent issues, Red Bull must quickly find solutions if they want to challenge for titles in the second half of the season.