Red Bull faces early 2027 call despite RB22 gains

Red Bull says it must soon decide how long to keep pushing the RB22 this season, with team principal Laurent Mekies warning after Hungary that several tenths still separate the car from the benchmark despite a major in-season recovery.

Mekies told RacingNews365 that Red Bull has reached the point where it must weigh this year's development against next year's project under Formula 1's restrictions. “I don’t know how it is for the others, but what we certainly know at the moment is that we have to make a decision on the balance between this year and next year. I expect we will do that earlier than we did last year, especially with the regulations as they are.”

That judgment comes even though Red Bull believes it has made big progress since the opening race. Mekies said the team found “really a lot of performance” between the start of the season and the Hungary weekend as it tried to erase the large deficit it carried early on. But he also made clear that pace of recovery is unlikely to continue indefinitely, saying Red Bull still needs to find “the last few tenths.”

Internally, the team does not see the Hungary result as evidence that the gap has disappeared. Mekies said Red Bull's data still shows “quite a few tenths” to make up to the current standard-setter, which he identified as Mercedes, and described the remaining gap as too big.

Technical director Pierre Waché explained in Hungary why the RB22 began the year so far behind. He said Red Bull started the new car very late after committing “extremely long” resources to the previous title fight, adding that rival teams had also done a very good job. The scale of the early problem was severe, with the car more than one second off the front at the start of the season.

Waché said the deficit was not just a matter of missing performance on paper. Red Bull also had mechanical problems early in the year that left the drivers without proper steering feel, an issue he said took time to correct.

Even with that recovery underway, Waché said Red Bull is trying to keep chasing victories in the current campaign and is following a “clear development plan until the end of the year.” The complication is that wind-tunnel time, CFD allocation and the budget cap all limit how much ground can be recovered, which is why Mekies' looming decision over this season and next year could shape how far Red Bull can close the gap from here.