Max Verstappen arrives in Madrid this weekend confronting a statistic that would have looked absurd at any point in the past decade: he could yet finish the 2026 Formula 1 season without a single grand prix victory.
Asked during the Dutch media session at Monza whether he now accepts that outcome is possible – something that has happened only once in his career, in his 2015 debut year – the Red Bull driver offered a revealing deflection. “I’m obviously never going to say that out loud!” he said.
A driver’s track, but not a driver’s cure
The Madring’s debut has been sold in part as an opportunity for the grid’s outliers: a circuit blending public roads with bespoke high-speed sections, limited runoff and the steeply banked ‘La Monumental’ curve, where reputation is supposed to count for more than aerodynamic efficiency. Attention has duly turned to Verstappen, Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton.
Verstappen is not indulging it. “I mean, you can make the story as beautiful as you want, right?” he told Motorsport.com. “Driver’s track or not, at the end of the day you still need a fast car in Formula 1.”
That is a blunt assessment of Red Bull’s year, and a consistent one. Verstappen has been the most vocal critic of Formula 1’s 2026 regulations since the hybrid reset arrived, and his objection is not simply that the Red Bull Ford power unit is off the pace – it is that the cars themselves have flattened the gap between drivers.
Why Verstappen thinks the 2026 cars have levelled the field
His evidence, offered at Monza, was the performance of Red Bull’s stand-ins during Isack Hadjar’s absence with a wrist injury. Liam Lawson stepped up from Racing Bulls to the senior team and took seventh at Zandvoort; Yuki Tsunoda moved the other way and scored a point in Italy.
“No disrespect. And I hope no one picks up on this,” Verstappen said. “But look at Yuki. He jumps in the car. Never driven the car before. Immediately competitive. Liam jumps from the Racing Bulls to the Red Bull – immediately competitive. It’s because these cars are numb to your driver inputs.”
He described the new machinery as constraining rather than rewarding commitment. “Normally the driver that is the most committed, the latest on the brakes, earlier on throttle, committing in the high-speed corners, they get rewarded,” he said. “But now you’re constantly thinking about, ‘In this corner I might have to hold in a bit. Go later on throttle.’ It’s so unnatural.” The fastest drivers, he conceded, will still come out on top – but “it’s really, really limited, like a choke hold or something”.
The counterpoint sits in the timing screens: both Lawson and Tsunoda were out-qualified by their team-mates at Zandvoort, which complicates the notion that anyone can simply climb in and go. It is an argument that has run all week, and one Tsunoda himself has pushed back on.
Ten rounds left, and a season without precedent
Verstappen’s read on his own form is unsentimental. “As a driver, I feel good this year, but I’m not winning races. Does that mean I’m a bad driver or not quick enough? I don’t think so.”
He has form for turning gloom into results. Twelve months ago he publicly wrote off his title chances, then finished on the podium in every remaining grand prix and came within two points of a fifth consecutive crown. This season is a different proposition. Mercedes have set the standard, Kimi Antonelli won at Monza to stretch his championship lead over team-mate George Russell to 66 points, and Red Bull’s straight-line deficit has been the defining feature of their campaign.
“Every time I’m in the car, I always go for the maximum,” Verstappen said. “If the opportunity comes to win a race, then of course I’ll go all out for it. But with how things stand at the moment, that chance isn’t very big.”
Ten rounds remain, starting at a circuit nobody has raced on – Madrid’s first world championship event since Jarama in 1981. If Verstappen is right about the 2026 cars, novelty will not be enough to rescue his season. If he is wrong, the Madring is the obvious place to prove it.
