Racing
© Morio
Max Verstappen’s third place at Spa-Francorchamps, backed by Isack Hadjar’s climb from 21st on the grid to sixth, offered Red Bull its clearest sign yet that the RB22 has become genuinely competitive again after a difficult start to the 2026 season.
The result mattered because it was not carried by one car alone. Red Bull arrived in Belgium wary that performance might be lacking, but left with Verstappen on the podium and Hadjar delivering what team principal Laurent Mekies called “without any doubt his best race with us.” Hadjar recovered 15 places, ran at the pace of the leading group and kept Lando Norris behind at the finish.
Mekies said Verstappen had been on course for second place on merit before the Virtual Safety Car worked against Red Bull. He also admitted that Kimi was “probably out of reach on pure pace,” a reminder that the team’s progress is real but not yet complete. Red Bull can now fight near the front, even if it still lacks the final few tenths needed to return to winning.
Hadjar’s race underlined the same point from the other side of the garage. Mekies said a grid penalty hurt the French driver’s chances and believed he would otherwise have started ahead of Charles Leclerc. Even so, Hadjar charged from the back, and Mekies said his pace was “fantastic” in a race shaped by a strategic call that was “not an obvious decision” but one the team executed successfully.
That double result fits a wider pattern identified by former Formula 1 driver Jolyon Palmer. Writing in his latest column for F1, Palmer said “the great news for Red Bull is that they seem to be competitive across a whole host of circuits, needing many different characteristics and requirements from the car.” He contrasted that with the opening phase of the season, when both Red Bull drivers struggled with “a lack of downforce” and with inconsistent balance “across not only a lap, but even individual corners.”
Spa was a strong test of whether those weaknesses had really been addressed. Palmer wrote that Red Bull “hit the ground running at Spa with impressive pace from the very first laps of practice” at a circuit whose “long, fast corners” expose any handling imbalance. For a car that had looked unpredictable earlier in the year, that was an important step beyond a single good Sunday.
Palmer also saw Hadjar’s drive as part of the bigger shift. He described Spa as the youngster’s best race weekend yet and said he was “pretty much faultless.” More significantly for Red Bull’s longer-term outlook, Palmer argued that Hadjar has been consistently quick in a way the team has not had from a second driver since Daniel Ricciardo in 2018.
Mekies said Red Bull “turned a corner after Austria” and that the team has now been able to fight for the podium in the last three races. If Spa is the latest proof that the RB22 now works on very different types of circuit, Red Bull’s season is no longer about limiting damage but about closing the remaining gap to the front and turning podium pace back into wins.