Verstappen confirms Red Bull wing return in Hungary

Max Verstappen has confirmed Red Bull will put its “Macarena” rear wing back on the RB22 for the Hungarian Grand Prix after removing it for Spa following the failures that led to his crashes in Austria and at Silverstone.

Speaking to Viaplay ahead of the Budapest weekend, Verstappen said the team believes the problem has been resolved after extensive checks. Asked whether the wing had already been reinstalled on the car, he replied: “Yes.”

Verstappen said Red Bull only approved the return after it was able to reproduce the issue and work through it in testing and simulation. “We assume that it has been resolved, but I obviously don’t know that,” he said. “They have carried out multiple tests and run further simulations. Hopefully it closes properly now. That is the goal.” He added: “Fortunately, they were also able to simulate it. It is already very good when you can reproduce the problem. Now I just hope it has been fixed, because obviously you don’t want that here either.”

The wing was taken off the car for the Belgian Grand Prix after Verstappen suffered two high-speed incidents on consecutive weekends. He later described the design as “super dangerous” and said, “I could have really hurt myself two times.”

Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies said after Spa that the Austria and Silverstone incidents were not caused by one repeating defect, but by separate failures within the mechanism. Mekies said “it was mechanical” and involved “two different mechanical issues,” while technical director Pierre Wache said the affected parts had been reinforced as the team worked to make sure the system was safe to run again.

That makes Hungary the first live test of Red Bull’s repaired rear-wing concept after the team temporarily reverted to its older specification in Belgium, where Verstappen said the main positive was simply that he could “keep the car on the road.”