Max Verstappen remains without a victory in the 2026 Formula 1 season, with his winless streak now stretching to 12 consecutive Grands Prix. After four straight world titles and narrowly missing a fifth at the final race of last season following a remarkable championship comeback, the Red Bull driver is now enduring his longest victory drought since 2017.
Max Verstappen has still managed to produce flashes of his trademark quality, but Red Bull’s difficulties adapting to Formula 1’s new technical regulations, combined with the significant progress made by Mercedes and Ferrari, have pushed the Milton Keynes team down to the role of fourth-fastest force. The Dutchman bears little responsibility for the difficult spell, and his ability is certainly not in question.
Max Verstappen still winless in 2026
After four consecutive world championships and a fifth title that slipped away only at the final race following a comeback for the ages, 2026 has brought Max Verstappen a severe downturn in results. Red Bull has struggled to extract enough performance from the RB22 under the new regulations, leaving its lead driver fighting from a position he has rarely experienced in recent seasons.
Despite those limitations, Max Verstappen has collected four podium finishes so far, coming in Canada, Austria, Belgium and Hungary. Those results comprise two second places and two third places, but the top step of the podium has remained out of reach. His position in the 2026 Formula 1 driver standings underlines how dramatically the competitive picture has changed compared with Red Bull’s title-winning years.
There is also a genuine possibility that the drought could continue until the end of the season. Max Verstappen himself has admitted that he “can’t work miracles”. With the leading three teams now engaged in an increasingly important development race, the danger for Red Bull is that the RB22’s deficit to its main rivals could increase rather than shrink.
Mercedes, for example, is preparing further development work as part of its next major W17 upgrade programme, while Ferrari continues to push ahead with its own SF-26 technical development. That puts even more pressure on Red Bull to find meaningful performance during the second half of the campaign.
Max Verstappen’s worst F1 win drought in almost a decade
The 12 consecutive Grands Prix Max Verstappen has completed without taking victory represent his second-longest winless streak since joining Red Bull. To find a worse sequence, it is necessary to go back almost a decade to the 2016 and 2017 seasons, when the then-young Dutch driver went 30 Grands Prix without a win.
That run began at the 2016 Monaco Grand Prix, immediately after Max Verstappen’s historic victory in Barcelona, and finally ended when he won the 2017 Malaysian Grand Prix. Since then, prolonged periods without a victory have been extremely rare for a driver who went on to dominate several seasons of Formula 1.
Max Verstappen risks first winless Red Bull season
Another striking statistic is that Max Verstappen has never completed a Formula 1 season with Red Bull without winning at least one Grand Prix. That record is now under threat in 2026.
He still has 11 opportunities remaining — or 10, depending on how the calendar changes — to prevent that sequence from ending. However, if the RB22 continues to perform at the level seen at Zandvoort, it is difficult to identify an obvious upcoming race where Max Verstappen would have a realistic chance of victory under normal circumstances.
Red Bull made substantial attempts to improve the car during the Dutch Grand Prix weekend, but major RB22 changes at Zandvoort failed to solve Max Verstappen’s problems. Unless he can take full advantage of an unpredictable or chaotic Grand Prix later in the year, ending the drought could therefore prove extremely difficult.
Even one of Formula 1’s strongest drivers cannot work miracles without a car capable of fighting at the front.
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