Former race engineer for Ferrari, Rob Smedley, has handed Red Bull an F1 2026 mid-season rating of five out of ten, as the team has struggled with “quite big” issues every weekend.
The stinging assessment of Red Bull’s performance in the first half of the season comes after the team has had an uphill battle most weekends. Both Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar have reported several problems with the RB22. Verstappen has been especially vocal regarding the car during the first 11 race weekends.
The Milton Keynes-based team have suffered from issues with balance, race-pace consistency, and power units. The 2026 season was Red Bull’s debut of its own power unit in partnership with Ford. However, the engine has not met the team’s standards.
Smedley spoke about his assessment of Red Bull’s season so far on the High Performance Racing podcast, and said: “Red Bull should be just doing so much better.
“Like, they’ve had too many basic problems, like Max [Verstappen] says, there’s a different problem every weekend or something like that.”
Smedley: “Red Bull should be doing so much better”
The four-time World Champion was frank about the RB22’s issues, stating that it often loses performance over the weekend or even during a race. While the team has suffered this season, they have also demonstrated moments of brilliance. In particular, Verstappen battled his way through the field from P6 to grab a P2 finish at the Hungarian GP.
Before the race, the sessions were spent navigating the RB22’s behaviour. In Free Practice, balance appeared to be the most concerning issue, while Qualifying revealed another problem. The last moments of Q3 saw the Dutchman spin as a result of a rear-wing failure.
Different problems popping up for the team have made it difficult for them to stay consistent, as they can have one strong weekend followed by another horrible weekend.
“I know he was a little bit emotional about it, but there is physically something different that pops out every weekend, and it’s always critical. It’s not something like a contained reliability or operational problem,” Smedley continued.
“It’s always something quite big, so I think Red Bull should be doing so much better, and because of that, I’m going to give him a five.”
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