There was much to take on board over the recent Miami Grand Prix weekend, with the tweaks to the Formula 1 power unit rules and the five-week break after the previous event in Japan giving teams time to attack major upgrade programs. One of the key lessons was that Red Bull Racing has made a clear step forward from its early season performances, through both upgrades and generally making better use of the car it has.
It had been a frustrating start to the 2026 season for Max Verstappen, with the initial promise of the new Ford-backed power unit tempered by poor reliability, and wider issues with the car. In Miami, things began to look up when the Dutchman qualified second, beaten only by championship leader Kimi Antonelli. His race was spoiled by a first-lap spin that sent him tumbling down the midfield pack, and then, as he tried to regain ground battling his way back up, the team took a gamble and gave him an early pit stop. That seemed to work initially as he moved up the order, but his ultra-long second stint was a stretch for his hard tires. He eventually had to settle for a distant fifth after what was had been a hectic afternoon for him.
“I lost the rear into Turn 2,” Verstappen said when Road & Track asked if he’d had fun. “And then of course I tried to minimize the time loss by doing that three-sixty. I thought I was going to crash, but then I floored it, and managed to do a good three-sixty. If F1 doesn’t work out, I can always go rally! After that, I think the pace was not too bad on the medium [tire], but as soon as I swapped to the hard compound, it was just a lot more difficult. And I think—now after the race, it is easy to say, of course—but I think that stint was just a bit too long.”
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A big package of aero updates appeared to work, while mechanical tweaks to the steering to give the drivers a much better feel also paid dividends. It was also notable that even through he had a better car and was able to fight with the quicker guys, nothing had changed for Verstappen in terms of what he thinks about the 2026 rules and how the cars have to be driven. “I mean, my car drives a bit better,” he conceded. “But what I said before about the regulations is still the same…”
Nevertheless, the weekend was a good reminder that one should never write-off Verstappen and Red Bull. We might not see a repeat of 2025, when they fought back into title contention and at times left McLaren trailing, but the Dutch driver looks at least set to be in the mix for podiums. Miami was thus a good weekend for RBR boss Laurent Mekies after the recent disappointments, and amid suggestions that the team is not the force that it used to be.
“There is a definitive step forward,” the Frenchman said. “We left Japan one-point-two seconds away from pole; China, one-point-zero seconds away from pole. The competition was not going to wait for us with their updates. We knew that on top of the development race, we had to solve some of our issues, and we knew there was lap time in it.”
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The numbers told a positive story. “To see us this weekend qualifying six-tenths away from [sprint] pole on Friday and less than two-tenths away from pole on Saturday is a big indication of the size of the progress,” he said. “What number is the correct one? We don’t know, but compared to where we were, it’s something much better than anything we have been able to show this year.”
The race was also solid, even if the final result didn’t really reflect that. “I think overall, big picture, again, race pace was strong, confirming the good signs shown in quali,” said Mekies. “Not strong enough for P1 and P2, but perhaps able to put us in a fight between a P3, P4 and P5, so again some things that we had not shown so far this season. And it’s credit to everyone back in Milton Keynes for such an important step forward. Don’t get me wrong—we have not cracked everything we want to do. So us against us, there is more we want to extract out of our package, and then we are conscious that development race will be on. And competition will bring stuff next race.”
The team knew before the break that it had to extract more from the exiting package, and those tweaks to the steering gave the drivers confidence that they were previously lacking. “After Suzuka on Sunday night, we said to each other, regardless of our performance deficit overall, we do not give at the moment a consistent car to our drivers,” said Mekies. “A car they can push with confidence, lap-to-lap, corner-to-corner. And that was most of the work that has been done in this five-week break, in addition to the normal development.”
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How the gains were divided between performance brought by the aero upgrades and unlocked from better optimizing the car in general was something that even the team couldn’t answer. “So yes, there is a split between the two, whatever the number, whatever the split is,” said Mekies. “But of course, it was tangible. It is lap time. We knew we were losing a serious amount of lap time with that lack of confidence the drivers could have in the car steering. The steering was an aspect; we had quite a few other aspects as well, and we still have a few to sort out.”
There’s no question that the Red Bull Racing of 2026 is very different from that even of the championship years. Long gone are Christian Horner, Adrian Newey, sporting director Jonathan Wheatley, Rob Marshall (latterly a key technical architect of McLaren’s success), and also now Helmut Marko, who may have been controversial at times but did help to steer the ship and was an important link to the parent company. And the changes continue; it was recently announced that Verstappen’s engineer and right-hand-man Giampiero Lambiase is heading to McLaren in 2028.
With so many key players leaving, the team has undergone quite a transformation, while the in-house power unit project has also changed the dynamic and added to the overall management workload. However, Mekies sees the positives. “We don’t want to be defensive about the fact that we lost some talents,” he says. “It’s a fact, and it’s been there for three or four years. And as a result of that, it’s the highest priority in the team to make sure that we create the environment in order to retain, develop and attract the best talent in the pit lane.
Red Bull feels it has the best talent already in-house, Mekies adds, and they intent to leverage that where they can. “When we can we will always try to see how we can promote internally. We have created a number of talents over the last few years, and we are proud of that. And if we need to go elsewhere to inject, we will do it happily.”
The next test comes in Montreal, where Verstappen won in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Will the team be able to continue its upward momentum?
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