Red Bull confirms Verstappen's car degradation problem won't be fully solved until 2027

Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies has confirmed that Max Verstappen’s persistent car degradation problem is genuine and will not be fully resolved until the team introduces a new chassis in 2027, with the RB22 offering only limited scope for improvement for the remainder of this season.

Verstappen has raised the issue publicly on multiple occasions in 2025, most notably at Monza, where he described the RB22 as “a car made of paper” after suffering performance drop-off during qualifying. The four-time world champion has since revealed he has been flagging the problem internally for several years, suggesting it has plagued Red Bull across multiple championship-winning seasons.

Mekies, speaking to media, stopped short of detailing the technical root cause but did not dispute Verstappen’s account. “I think Max is right in saying that there is an element of car performance degradation that is happening through a session and through a race,” the Frenchman said. “He’s also right in saying that it’s not a new issue. We are not sleeping on it. We have been trying to tackle that in different ways.”

The Red Bull principal described the fault as a complex one centred around the rear axle, adding that the team has been making incremental progress rather than landing on a definitive solution. “I consider it a complex issue. Otherwise, we would get to the bottom of it,” Mekies said. “Everyone is very constructive about it and we are trying to make small steps at a time to be able to finally get to the bottom of it.”

Red Bull attempted to apply lessons learned at Monza when the circus moved to Madrid for Formula 1’s inaugural race at the Madring, and Mekies reported a degree of improvement. “We had a couple of positive steps in that regard this weekend,” he said. “It will never be the full picture, but we certainly have, through pain, made progress into our understanding. We don’t have all the solutions on the car yet, but I trust that we are in the right way.”

However, Mekies was candid that a comprehensive fix is beyond the team’s reach this year. The budget cap limits mid-season development spend, and the team’s engineering focus has already shifted toward the 2027 car — which will be built under an entirely new set of technical regulations. “It will not be fast, so it’s something that will probably take us through next year,” he said.

The admission is a notable one given Red Bull’s recent dominance of the sport, and it underlines the scale of the challenge Verstappen faces in defending his title with a car that, by his own description, deteriorates as a race weekend progresses.