Red Bull’s Max Verstappen Says Team Only Has Fourth-Fastest Car

Max Verstappen did not hide his concern over the performance of the Red Bull RB22 after a start to the season in which the Austrian team has been clearly outperformed by Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren.

The four time world champion, who has only managed one podium so far this year, said the car is currently the fourth fastest on the grid and that the situation will not be solved with small adjustments: "I think at the moment, we just have the fourth fastest car, that's not going to suddenly change in the next circuits unless we get a performance boost, we're not going to solve this just by changing the setup" declared Verstappen.

The Dutchman, who dominated the category in previous seasons with 15 wins in 2022 and 19 in 2023, is going through a difficult year in which the new regulations have leveled the competition and left Red Bull behind its rivals. Laurent Mekies had already warned that the first races would not be easy after the team put so much effort into winning the 2025 championship, but reality is turning out worse than expected and the team cannot find the key to recover lost ground.

Verstappen identified the areas where the RB22 needs to improve to be competitive again: "We need to find more performance and bring better upgrades, whoever introduces upgrades takes a step forward, at the end of the day it all depends on who gets the biggest improvement, that's the story of this season" analyzed the driver, who sees how Mercedes has won six of the seven races held so far (two with Russell and four with Antonelli, plus Hamilton's win in Barcelona) while Red Bull has fallen behind in the fight for wins.

The four time champion also detailed the specific problems of the car: "I think we're definitely lacking something in the fast corners, but that wasn't even the biggest problem in qualifying, it's mainly circuits with high energy load on the tires and a lot of degradation where we still have shortcomings, we're just lacking a bit in every aspect" concluded Verstappen, making it clear that the team needs a step forward in all areas.

The Dutch driver, whose future at Red Bull is up in the air after his retirement threats over the new regulations, hopes the team reacts quickly and brings substantial upgrades that allow him to fight for wins again and not settle for being the fourth team on the grid.

Pressure is mounting on the Milton Keynes engineers after Verstappen has been the only driver to score consistently, while his teammate Isack Hadjar has scored points on rare occasions.