Schiff warns Red Bull's knife-edge car is costing Verstappen and Hadjar at crucial stage

Red Bull left Austin with little to show from the United States Grand Prix, and broadcaster Naomi Schiff believes the team’s problems run deeper than two isolated incidents. Both Max Verstappen and rookie Isack Hadjar were compromised before the first corner, exposing what Schiff describes as a persistently fragile car that sits on a “knife’s edge” of its operating window.

Hadjar suffered a launch issue severe enough that he demanded a clutch redesign from his engineers, while Verstappen lost electrical deployment out of Turn 1 and was immediately swallowed up by the Ferraris, turning what had promised to be a front-running battle into a race-long damage-limitation exercise.

“It was such a shame that they both didn’t get off the line there because it was a battle we were looking forward to between Max and Kimi, but then also Isack being in there could have really caused a little bit of an upset and potentially, who knows, clinched his first victory in Formula 1,” Schiff said on the Up To Speed podcast.

Schiff argued the clutch failure was symptomatic of a broader fragility that has shadowed the Milton Keynes outfit for several seasons. “Besides the clutch, there’s a lot that needs to be looked at. It feels like there’s really not a very big operational window that works with that car, and that it’s really on a knife’s edge, as it has been for a number of years now.”

Verstappen himself acknowledged over team radio that Red Bull’s strategy had not been optimised, and Schiff noted his frustration at being sent back out into dirty air rather than being given a cleaner strategic path. “Max admitting at the end that maybe the strategy call that they had from the beginning wasn’t right,” she added. “That car just doesn’t seem to be very easy to drive for either of those drivers at the moment.”

With the 2026 regulations looming, the concern is that a car requiring such precise conditions to perform will leave Red Bull exposed as rivals continue to develop. Hadjar, still chasing his maiden Formula 1 victory, can ill afford further mechanical setbacks as he looks to establish himself at the top level.