Qualifying showed real progress
Red Bull arrived at the United States Grand Prix with a point to prove, and Saturday gave it a good answer. The team locked out second and third on the grid in Austin, a result [1] read as proof of how far the car has come since the Baku upgrade. The central claim in that analysis is that Red Bull no longer drops away from the pace on difficult days, which had been a weakness earlier in the season.
It was not a perfect session. Gusts of wind affected driver performance in Q3, and Max Verstappen was puzzled by a loss of grip in the final runs. Even so, the team still converted a messy top-ten shootout into a front-two-rows start. Verstappen also said he was confident in the car’s race pace, although he admitted the start itself was a question mark.
That caveat matters. Poor starts have been a recurring complaint for Red Bull this season, and a strong grid position is only worth something if it survives the first few hundred metres. Qualifying in Austin suggested the underlying speed is there. Sunday would test everything around it.
A podium that felt like a compromise
Verstappen finished third behind race winner Kimi Antonelli and runner-up Charles Leclerc. [2] reports that Antonelli took his ninth win of 2026 from pole for Mercedes. Verstappen’s afternoon was far from clean. He needed a second pit stop because of engine braking issues, which he described as an undriveable car.
The frustrations went beyond that one stop. According to [3], Red Bull’s softer-compound tyre strategy backfired, and Verstappen reported inconsistent power unit behaviour through corners. He also flagged a slow pit stop, which cost time in a race where track position mattered. Finishing on the podium after all of that is a credit to the pace in the car, but it also means the result may have flattered the weekend.
Behind him, Isack Hadjar finished sixth and Liam Lawson ninth. Those results gave Red Bull points from three cars in the order listed in the input, though the facts do not describe how either of those races unfolded. Mercedes’ Russell took a five-second penalty and finished eighth, so the order behind the podium was shaped by more than raw speed.
The radio problem that keeps coming back
The most striking theme from Austin was not tyres or power but communication. The radio problems recurred at the US GP, with both Verstappen and Hadjar experiencing issues with the team. Verstappen said he could not hear stand-in race engineer Tom Hart, which left him without clear guidance during a race that already demanded constant adjustments. The [3] report framed it as one of two recurring Red Bull problems, alongside the starts.
That is a fixable kind of weakness, but it is also an avoidable one. A driver managing inconsistent power delivery and an engine braking fault needs to talk to his engineer, and in Austin he often could not. The input does not say whether the team has identified the cause, so it would be wrong to guess. What it does show is that the problem is not isolated to one driver or one session.
The pit wall also had to deal with the slow stop and the second visit caused by the engine braking trouble. Taken together, the operational errors cost Red Bull more than the car’s speed did. A car that can take second and third on the grid should not be giving back places through a faulty radio and a slow stop.
What it means
Red Bull sits fourth in the Formula 1 World Championship with 352 points from 18 rounds, and the site’s records show two wins in that run. That is a respectable position for a team still rebuilding its pace, but the standings show a team behind the leaders rather than part of the title fight. With Antonelli able to clinch the drivers’ title at the Mexico Grand Prix with just two more points, Red Bull is more likely to be racing for podiums than for the championship in the closing rounds.
The Austin weekend shows where the points are being gained and lost. Qualifying pace and a podium finish suggest the car is competitive. The radio failures, the power unit behaviour and the pit stop show what stands between fourth place and something better. Mexico is the next test: it will show whether Red Bull can turn the progress seen since Baku into a clean race, with working communication, a good start and no unforced losses.
Sources
- Autosport: Red Bull no longer falls away on difficult days: What Austin qualifying reveals about its progress motorsport.com ↩
- Autosport: F1 United States GP: Antonelli dominates from pole - but forced to wait for title autosport.com ↩
- Autosport: The two recurring issues that hampered Verstappen and Red Bull again at the US GP motorsport.com ↩