The data doesn't lie: the Austrian team is nearly a second off the top, the problem isn't the engine, it's the lack of downforce. The recovery, based on history, could take years.
Red Bull is living its worst nightmare in more than a decade. The team that dominated the ground-effect era between 2022 and 2025 has plummeted under the new 2026 regulations. The numbers are cold and devastating: just 16 points in three Grand Prix, a sixth place in the constructors' championship, and a qualifying pace that averages 0.97 seconds per lap behind the leader. In race trim? The disaster is even greater: 1.26 seconds per lap slower than Mercedes.
To find a Red Bull this slow you have to go back to 2015, eleven years ago, in that season with Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kvyat behind the wheel, the qualifying deficit against the benchmark (then also Mercedes) was 1.18 seconds on average. The current RB22, with a 0.97 second deficit, isn't as bad as the 2015 car, but it is worse than the 2014 car, when the team was the clear second force despite being 0.83 seconds behind the leaders.
What's worrying is that the problem isn't where many assume, the power unit developed by Red Bull Powertrains is not the problem, in fact, on the three circuits raced (Australia, China and Japan), the RB22's top speed has been competitive and even superior to Ferrari's. The Achilles' heel is in the corners, the second sector in China and the high speed esses at Suzuka revealed an alarming lack of downforce.
The comparison with Racing Bulls is revealing: same engine, but opposite philosophies, while the official team seeks top speed, its sister team achieves lap times in a different way, which points to a concept problem with the RB22.
History invites pessimism: when the hybrid era arrived in 2014, Red Bull took seven full seasons to become dominant again. It wasn't until 2019 that they managed to reduce the qualifying gap to Mercedes to less than half a second. Now, with a regulatory change less drastic than that one, but with deep aerodynamic problems, the road back to the top will not be fast.
The Austrian team needs to redesign its concept and find downforce, in the meantime, it will have to settle for battling against Alpine and Haas at the top of the midfield, far from Mercedes and four tenths behind McLaren, who also surpass them. It's a long road back with no easy fixes in sight. The era of hegemony is over. For Red Bull, the era of reconstruction has now begun.