RacingRed Bull has called itself the fourth team and is treating Miami as a second season launch. Team principal Laurent Mekies said on the Beyond the Grid podcast that “it will be a bit like a second season launch when we are back at the track in Miami,” adding “the competition is ahead right now, we are the fourth team right now,” and that Red Bull is “around a second per lap” off Mercedes. After a bruising run through Albert Park, Shanghai and Suzuka, the target is clear. Fix an overweight, low‑downforce and unpredictable RB22, and start clawing back time.
The reset window is real. The Bahrain and Saudi Arabian grands prix were cancelled, which left a five‑week gap between Japan and Miami. Red Bull has spent it chasing weight and downforce. Reports indicate the RB22 began life about 9 to 10 kilograms overweight, and the car’s unstable balance has kept the drivers from pushing. Former Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko said “The updates, especially in Japan, have sent the car in the wrong direction. It has worsened,” in a statement to APA. The team has prepared a first stage of weight reduction and aerodynamic updates for Miami, a litmus test for whether the direction is right.
Mekies painted the competitive picture in stark terms after Suzuka. He told reporters on Sunday night after the Japanese Grand Prix that the gap sat at “1 second to the best guy” and “half a second to the best Ferrari,” and that “So, we are a distant force.” He said Melbourne looked slightly kinder, but China and Japan exposed deeper issues as qualifying gaps grew: 0.785 seconds in Australia with Isack Hadjar, 0.938 in China with Max Verstappen, and 1.200 in Japan with Hadjar.
Hadjar, the Red Bull Racing driver, did not sugarcoat what the RB22 feels like. In a media interview quoted in the article, he said the car is “difficult to drive and also slow,” and that “We still don’t know which direction we should go in.” He pointed to a lack of grip as the base problem. “There’s no downforce… The balance changes immediately.” The contrast to last year is striking in his view. The RB21 could be tricky, but it was still fast. This one asks for patience, then gives little back.
Verstappen has pushed the engine talk to the side. He told Autosport after the Japanese Grand Prix: “I think our deployment was good. That’s also not our biggest problem, to be honest. I think actually from the engine side, yes, correlation and a few things like calibration can be better, but in terms of pure power, it’s not our worst thing for sure,” before adding, “we have a lot more work to do, definitely a lot more work to do on the car.”
Mekies said on Sunday night that Red Bull is wrestling with base performance and a car trait that sits on top of it, not just a setup miss. He framed Miami as the first read on whether the factory work has landed. The goal is simple to describe and hard to deliver: get weight out, find downforce, and give Verstappen and Hadjar a car that holds its balance from lap to lap.