Racing Bulls has emerged as Formula 1’s leading midfield team after a series of crucial upgrades transformed the performance of the V-CARB03 during the first half of the 2026 season. With 66 points before the summer break, the Faenza squad sits behind only the four leading teams in the Constructors’ Championship and has opened a five-point advantage over Alpine.
The strong 2025 campaign has therefore developed into an even more encouraging season so far. Racing Bulls has also benefited from what FIA measurements over the opening six races indicated was the most powerful power unit on the grid. However, engine performance alone does not explain its rise. From the opening weeks of the new regulatory cycle, teams stressed that the development curve would be exceptionally steep and that competitiveness would depend heavily on the ability to introduce effective upgrades. During the first six months of 2026, Racing Bulls has done that better than any of its midfield rivals, creating a performance gap to Alpine, Audi and Haas.
The challenge now is to maintain that positive development trajectory throughout the second half of the campaign. If Racing Bulls can do so, the team will have a genuine opportunity to secure the best championship finish in its history.
Racing Bulls upgrades deliver crucial step from Spielberg to Silverstone
The development has not come as a major surprise. Early in the season, Racing Bulls, Audi and Haas were engaged in an extremely close battle to establish themselves as the sixth-fastest team behind Alpine. The French squad’s decision to sacrifice much of its 2025 campaign initially paid dividends, allowing Alpine to build a useful performance and championship advantage during the opening rounds.
The Mercedes power unit probably provided Pierre Gasly and Franco Colapinto with considerable assistance during that initial phase, but Alpine subsequently lacked the development gradient required to remain ahead of the strongest midfield teams. After scoring 57 points across the opening seven weekends, the team managed only four points from the following four Grands Prix.
Racing Bulls faced a different problem. During the first part of the year, the V-CARB03 was highly competitive over a single qualifying lap but lost too much performance once the car was running with a heavy fuel load during races.
Speaking recently on the Beyond the Grid podcast, Racing Bulls team principal Alan Permane explained the weakness the team had identified.
“In Barcelona, we managed to qualify both of our cars in Q3 extremely easily; in fact, I think in Q1 we used only one set, while many others used two or three. But in the race, Alpine was much faster than us.”
From Melbourne through to Barcelona, Racing Bulls lost on average more than three tenths of performance between Saturday and Sunday relative to the other teams fighting for the final points-paying positions.
More than three tenths gained through V-CARB03 development
Racing Bulls attacked the problem on several fronts. Upgrade packages introduced at Spielberg, Silverstone and Spa provided a fundamental performance contribution worth more than three tenths of a second.
Those developments were combined with a new set-up direction for the car and targeted work with Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad on adapting their driving styles to the new generation of Formula 1 machinery. The result was that Racing Bulls finally began converting its strong Saturday pace into meaningful points on Sunday.
The raw data shows that the difference between qualifying and race performance has not actually become significantly smaller. Instead, the overall improvement in the V-CARB03 has increased the buffer Racing Bulls enjoys over its rivals. Across the most recent four races, the car has effectively operated as the fifth-fastest package in race conditions.
That progress has allowed the Faenza operation to create an increasingly substantial gap over Alpine and Audi during the past two months. Racing Bulls and Red Bull have been the two teams to make the strongest development progress between May and July.
The competitive rise also places greater emphasis on how the team manages Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad as the pressure increases. Alan Permane has already established a clear approach for the Racing Bulls driver pairing as both drivers continue to contribute to the team’s midfield push.
Haas loses ground as Audi becomes Racing Bulls’ closest threat
Haas has moved in the opposite direction. Unsatisfactory developments have cost the team around half a second relative to the rest of the field, taking it out of the midfield battle in which it was involved during the opening races.
Audi is currently the team closest to Racing Bulls in terms of outright performance. The biggest difference between the two cars comes on the straights, where the RBPT power unit gives Racing Bulls a clear advantage. Through the corners, however, their qualifying performance is broadly comparable.
That comparison has become particularly interesting because the Audi R26 appears to possess considerable chassis potential, while its power-unit deficit continues to limit its overall lap time. Racing Bulls, by contrast, is able to combine competitive cornering performance with a stronger engine package.
Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad give Racing Bulls another advantage
Part of the credit for Racing Bulls’ excellent campaign also belongs to its drivers. For most of the season, both Liam Lawson and Arvid Lindblad have extracted a strong level of performance from the V-CARB03 while keeping mistakes to a minimum.
The qualifying comparison illustrates just how closely matched they have been. Liam Lawson leads Arvid Lindblad 6-5, with an average advantage measured in only thousandths of a second. The British driver has significantly reduced his earlier deficit by beating his team-mate in each of the last three qualifying sessions.
In race conditions, Liam Lawson’s advantage grows slightly, although the average gap still remains below one tenth of a second. The New Zealander leads the head-to-head comparison 6-2.
Having two drivers capable of operating at such a similar level has helped Racing Bulls maximise the performance of a car that has steadily become more competitive. It is one reason the team has been one of the standout midfield performers of the season so far, a trend also reflected in broader assessments of the 2026 F1 teams at the summer break.
Racing Bulls’ development strategy from Zandvoort to the end of 2026
The same development philosophy will be critical from Zandvoort through to the final races of the year. During the second half of the season, power-unit developments could join the aerodynamic and chassis upgrades already planned by several manufacturers.
If the FIA confirms the findings from its first assessment period after analysing data collected between Monaco and Budapest, teams using RBPT power units will not have access to ADUO assistance for the remainder of the season. In that scenario, Racing Bulls would have to rely entirely on aerodynamic and chassis upgrades to generate further performance gains.
Audi is expected to find itself in a similar position. According to information gathered by Autoracer, Nico Hülkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto are set to use only the ADUO 1 power unit specification for the remainder of the season, with no additional development effort currently planned.
The Neuburg-designed Audi power unit continues to carry a significant deficit compared with Racing Bulls and Alpine, and that disadvantage is expected to remain for the rest of the 2026 campaign. That makes chassis and aerodynamic development even more important if Audi wants to close the gap to the Faenza team.
Power-unit developments could reshape the midfield battle
Other teams, meanwhile, still have potential gains coming from the power-unit side. Aston Martin remains a long way behind in the championship but is set to introduce a new engine specification at Zandvoort, with expected gains of around 35 horsepower.
Haas is expected to have Ferrari’s new power unit available during the opening weeks of September, while Alpine will depend on the development decisions made by Mercedes.
Racing Bulls therefore enters the second half of the season in an enviable position, but its current advantage is not guaranteed to remain intact. The team has built its fifth-place position through a combination of strong development, competitive power-unit performance, better race execution and a closely matched driver pairing.
What happens next will depend largely on whether Racing Bulls can maintain the same steep improvement curve. Its rivals still have opportunities to recover, especially as Audi continues to show strong chassis performance and other teams prepare further upgrades. But after the progress made between Spielberg, Silverstone and Spa, Racing Bulls has established itself as the benchmark that the rest of Formula 1’s midfield now has to catch.
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