Max Verstappen secured his tenth podium finish of the 2026 Formula 1 season in Austin, his sixth in succession since his crash at Zandvoort. It is an impressive statistic, although it did little to satisfy him at the Circuit of the Americas.
On Saturday, the pace appeared to be there to take pole position – at least judging by Verstappen's impressive Q2 lap – but he inexplicably lost grip in Q3. Based on the practice sessions, his race pace still appeared good enough to challenge for the win, but according to Verstappen, too many small things went wrong during the race.
"It was pretty frustrating, to be honest, just not a really good race for us", Verstappen said in the post-race press conference.
Why Red Bull's recent strength turned into a weakness in Austin
That frustration stems partly from problems that have been troubling Red Bull for some time and partly from decisions specific to this race that ultimately backfired.
"In hindsight, of course, it’s very easy to say, but for whatever reason, the softer compounds were not really working that well today. Then also, I think the way that we used our tyres was wrong, the order of the stints.
"I think at one point, it was quite clear that the people on the harder compounds were finding a lot of grip, so I guess we didn't really react to that. We were probably sticking a bit too much to our belief from the last two races, where the softer compounds were the fastest. But clearly here, that didn't work."
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing
Photo by: Alex Bierens de Haan / LAT Images via Getty Images
In recent race weekends, that had been one of the areas where Red Bull made the difference. The RB22 had been particularly good at managing the softer tyres and keeping them alive in the right operating window, but in Austin the opposite proved to be the case, as team principal Laurent Mekies also admitted after the race.
Verstappen also complained over the team radio about issues related to the power unit, to which the team responded with some engine braking suggestions.
"Besides the strategy, we had too many issues with the power unit, where it was just very inconsistent behaviour around the corners. Every lap and every corner, the behaviour was different", Verstappen said.
"You can't build up a rhythm, you can't build any kind of consistency in the car. And then I had a slow pit stop as well, so yeah, too many things today that just didn't go well."
Two recurring problems continue to trouble Red Bull
While the strategy and power unit problems were specific to this race, there are two other factors Red Bull has been struggling with throughout the year: radio communication and poor starts. Regarding the latter, Verstappen explained that his start in Austin was not so much bad as simply in line with Red Bull's average this year – which has been consistently below par.
"I didn't lose a position, so it wasn't that bad. It's normal. My start was normal, just consistently sh**", Verstappen said, stopping short of finishing the final word to avoid swearing during the FIA press conference.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
Radio communication has also become a recurring problem. In Singapore, his regular race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase could not hear Verstappen, forcing them to switch to coded communication. Mekies subsequently said Red Bull was taking the problem very seriously and wanted to come up with a "strong solution", but that solution had evidently not yet materialised in Austin.
At the extremely bumpy Circuit of the Americas, both Hadjar and Verstappen experienced communication problems with the team. In Verstappen's case, he could not hear Tom Hart, who was standing in as his race engineer this weekend to begin building their working relationship for the future.
"It's not the second time. It's already, I don't know how many times this year. Maybe we should just start communicating in sign language! It's probably cheaper as well", Verstappen joked.
"But yeah, it’s a disaster. It's really frustrating, to be honest."
Taken together, all these setbacks meant Red Bull was unable to extract the full potential of the RB22 in Texas. Team members acknowledge that Kimi Antonelli also had the upper hand in terms of outright pace, although Verstappen's frustration mainly stems from the fact that Red Bull did not even reach the level it had been aiming for.
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