Aug.6 (GMM) Max Verstappen may have confirmed his Red Bull stay for 2026, but Dutch pundits and insiders are warning that all is definitely not well at the reigning champions.
Despite extending his commitment to the team following obvious talks with Mercedes, Verstappen’s painful weekend in Hungary raised further doubts about Red Bull’s trajectory – with the car struggling badly through the tight, twisty layout.
“You could hear it on the radio that he was done with it,” former Red Bull driver Robert Doornbos told Ziggo Sport. “I think the word ‘painful’ was clear. That’s why his engineer was silent on the radio for a moment.”
Doornbos said the quadruple world champion’s audacious overtake on Hamilton actually showed frustration. “He almost overdid it. He’s taking an incredible amount of risk, purely because he thinks: well, I’ll just race at the limit with what I have – but there was no speed in it.”
Christian Albers, meanwhile, pushed back against the claim of Verstappen’s teammate Yuki Tsunoda that he’s closing the gap to Verstappen. “It’s interesting that the gap between Tsunoda and Max gets smaller when the car is bad,” Albers told De Telegraaf. “When the car is good, the gap gets bigger again.”
Albers said Verstappen was clearly uncomfortable all weekend. “I saw the onboards. You could see Max was suffering. Understeer in the middle of corners is unbelievable. He doesn’t like that.”
Jacques Villeneuve, in La Gazzetta dello Sport, believes Red Bull’s off-track chaos has taken a toll. “There was an internal war, and Helmut Marko and Jos Verstappen beat Christian Horner – but all of them undoubtedly weakened the team.”
Doornbos doesn’t expect a quick fix to that. “It’s quite worrying when you have three full hours of practice – and it wasn’t a sprint weekend – and you still can’t find balance,” he said. “Then it’s not just a one-off, as Helmut Marko said.
“With Marko, the glass is always half full.”
With the first race after the August break taking place at Verstappen’s home GP at Zandvoort, commentator Olav Mol offered a blunt warning: “I’m not trying to upset the people who come to Zandvoort, but I think it will be very similar to Hungary.”
Doornbos is slightly more optimistic. “Zandvoort is old school, with really fast corners,” he said. “Ultimately, a driver can still make a difference in difficult conditions.”
Even so, he admits Verstappen enters the break with low spirits. “That’s not how you go into the summer break with a good feeling.
“But I think he’s already back on his boat somewhere in France or Italy, taking a break from Formula 1,” Doornbos laughed.
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