Red Bull confirms Baku package is its final major upgrade as 2027 focus takes over

Red Bull will make no further major car upgrades in 2026 after introducing a revised floor, sidepod geometry, and mirror assembly at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku, team principal Laurent Mekies confirmed on Thursday. The Milton Keynes squad has shifted the large majority of its development resources to its 2027 challenger, effectively drawing a line under this season’s upgrade programme.

“It’s most probably our last significant package,” Mekies said at Thursday’s team principals’ press conference. “We have switched a significant part of our resources, a very large majority of our resources, to next year’s car.”

Both Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar will run the updated specification this weekend. According to the FIA’s technical documentation, the most notable element is a new floor featuring “subtle changes within the permitted geometry to extract more local load whilst maintaining flow stability”, developed under technical director Pierre Wache.

Baku had long been earmarked as a key upgrade venue across the paddock, with Williams arriving with a ‘B-spec’ car and McLaren debuting significantly revised sidepods. Red Bull’s five-part package represents its contribution to what has become one of the more active development rounds of the season.

Despite closing the development chapter on 2026, Mekies stressed the team retains two clear motivations for the remaining races. Red Bull is still chasing its first victory of the season — a win that would prevent the team and Verstappen from enduring a winless campaign for the first time since 2015. Verstappen himself acknowledged in Monza that such an outcome was “very likely” given the team’s current pace relative to the frontrunners.

The second motivation is data. With only minor regulatory changes expected for 2027, Mekies believes the remaining grands prix offer a valuable learning window. “The regulations have only very little changes for next year and there are huge opportunities for us to continue to learn in the remaining races, to make sure we arrive as prepared as we can for next year,” he said.

There are reasons for cautious optimism. Verstappen has finished on the podium in five of the last seven rounds, including back-to-back podiums at Monza and Madrid. Mekies acknowledged the improvement while tempering expectations: “Strong weekends mean that you fight for the podium. I think we had five or six podiums in the last seven races, so that is a positive” — though he stopped short of suggesting the team is yet at the level it wants to reach.