Max Verstappen is hopeful that Red Bull can continue their \u201cupward trend\u201d at the Hungarian Grand Prix, having been encouraged by the \u201cnice improvements\u201d the team are making so far in 2026.<\/p>\n
After a steady start to the campaign, and F1\u2019s new era of regulations, Red Bull<\/a> made a clear step forward three rounds ago in Austria, where they introduced a major upgrade package<\/a> for the RB22 challenger.<\/p>\n Verstappen<\/a> has put those updates to good use, scoring podiums at the Red Bull Ring and at Spa-Francorchamps last weekend, and only missed out on another at Silverstone due to an issue with their \u2018macarena\u2019 rear wing, which has since been removed<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ahead of this weekend\u2019s action in Budapest, which will be the last before the summer break, Verstappen expressed his optimism that Red Bull will be competitive enough to \u201ckeep that momentum going\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m looking forward to go out here and see how competitive we are \u2013 I don\u2019t really know,\u201d said the four-time World Champion at the Hungaroring on Thursday.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a decent weekend in Spa; to be on the podium there was definitely very nice. It\u2019s been in general an upwards trend the last few races, so that\u2019s good to see.<\/p>\n \u201cThe season probably didn\u2019t start where we wanted it to start, so we\u2019re making nice improvements.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked if it is a case of Red Bull\u2019s new power unit over-performing, and their chassis under-performing, so far this season, the Dutchman added: \u201cI think the engine guys in general have been very straightforward and honest about what they were doing, so everything that they said more or less came true, I think.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, it\u2019s nice anyway to see the project where it started a few years ago to where we are now. It\u2019s super impressive to have this kind of performance.<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t start the season, I guess, how we wanted it to go, but we see an upwards trend. Hopefully we can keep that momentum going.\u201d<\/p>\n As for whether Red Bull will get themselves in a position to return to winning ways before the year is out, Verstappen signed off: \u201cI hope at some point. I don\u2019t know when, but we always go out there to try and win.\u201d<\/p>\n After 10 rounds, Verstappen sits seventh in the Drivers\u2019 Championship<\/a> on 91 points, 113 away from leader Kimi Antonelli<\/a>, while Red Bull are fourth in the Teams\u2019 battle, behind McLaren<\/a>, Ferrari<\/a> and Mercedes<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen is hopeful that Red Bull can continue their \u201cupward trend\u201d at the Hungarian Grand Prix, having…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":820151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-820150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/820151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}