Now that Red Bull has passed the high-downforce test in the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix, it’s clear that its progress over recent weeks hasn’t been limited to just one type of circuit. Of course, the Circuit of the Americas up next will pose a completely different challenge with its many medium-speed corners – the very type of corners that team boss Laurent Mekies pointed out to at Zandvoort, where he said the team was “killed by McLaren”.
Success is therefore not guaranteed everywhere, but Red Bull has undeniably found something after the summer break. Verstappen has since scored more points than any other driver on the grid, with a consistent run of results: P2, P1, P1, and P2. The key question is what that ‘something’ actually means. As Andrea Stella pointed out, one factor is that Red Bull has continued to develop its car longer than McLaren. Mekies’ squad introduced a new floor in Monza and a new front wing in Singapore – which chief engineer Paul Monaghan said is likely the last significant upgrade of the season.
McLaren, by contrast, has shifted its full focus to 2026 early on, although the approaches of both teams make sense. McLaren’s advantage was large enough that it could afford to move extremely early to the next-generation of cars. Red Bull, however, found itself in a completely different situation. For a long time, the team was “looking at two different watches”, as Christian Horner described it – meaning the correlation between the virtual world and the real track was off.
That problem needed to be fixed first; otherwise, the team would head blindly into 2026 and risk another wrong turn. The best way to validate those tools was through the current car, making it entirely logical for Red Bull to keep developing the RB21 for longer.
