{"id":837372,"date":"2026-08-01T08:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T08:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/837372\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T08:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T08:06:10","slug":"max-verstappen-trying-to-enjoy-2026-formula-1-season-where-he-can","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/837372\/","title":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen trying to enjoy 2026 Formula 1 season where he can"},"content":{"rendered":"

Max Verstappen’s dislike of the 2026 Formula 1<\/a> regulations was compounded with Red Bull Racing’s lack of competitiveness, which left him frustrated.<\/p>\n

However, the Dutchman insisted that he is trying to make the best out of the situation despite all the negativity.<\/p>\n

Verstappen’s rightful criticism of the woeful 2026 Formula 1 regulations has been well documented<\/a>, as he also has to deal with a subpar and inconsistent RB22 his team has put at his disposal this season.Speaking after taking second place in the 2026 Hungarian Grand Prix<\/a>, where he complained that his RB22 was degrading aerodynamically, Verstappen shed some light on his state of mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, it\u2019s definitely been a bit of a jungle this year,” he said, “but I\u2019m just trying to enjoy it where I can. Of course, when the car is a bit nicer to drive, you can enjoy it a little bit more.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to first find more overall performance,\u201d he pointed out. \u201cThen we need to fix our problems, where we sometimes just lose performance over a weekend, or even from the start of the race to the end.<\/p>\n

“So, yeah, that is also actually a big priority,” the four-time Formula 1 Champion concluded.<\/p>\n

Red Bull Racing did not deliver the car for their drivers\"Wache-Mekies-Japan-2026\"\/<\/p>\n

Red Bull Racing boss Laurent Mekies admits his team has failed to deliver the car with which Verstappen and teammate Isack Hadjar can compete at the top despite a couple of upgrades in Miami and Austria to the RB22 that was considerably overweight at its conception.<\/p>\n

He said after the race in Hungary:\u00a0\u201cI think we never managed to give Max and Isack a car they could push with.<\/p>\n

“So, for example, if I look back to driver’s feedback in Spa or in Austria, they would probably have said that the car was pretty much ballpark to how it should feel and to what it allows them to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was never the case this weekend, certainly worse on Friday and Saturday compared to [Sunday], but still [in the race], I have to say that it probably was still not giving a very good feeling to the drivers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ll try to see why we are so much on the edge of car balance, corner balance, car performing, car not performing, because it’s been hard work for certainly the drivers but also the team in these last few races to keep the car in its window,” the Frenchman explained. (Reporting by Agnes Carlier)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen’s dislike of the 2026 Formula 1 regulations was compounded with Red Bull Racing’s lack of competitiveness,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":837373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[10860,64,63,817,35119,813,816,825,946,85],"class_list":["post-837372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-2026-f1-regulations","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-f1-news","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-max-verstappen","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837372","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=837372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/837373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}