Red Bull has successfully reduced the excess weight of the RB22 with the upgrade package introduced at the Miami Grand Prix, delivering the expected gains across multiple performance areas, including pure aerodynamic load. The objective now is to continue along that path, with the team’s engineers hoping to bring the car down to the FIA minimum weight threshold after the opening European races of the 2026 Formula 1 season.
Max Verstappen’s fifth-place finish in Miami carried far greater significance than the final result alone might suggest, because it reignited Red Bull’s ambitions at a crucial point in the season. Without the early spin that compromised his race, the Dutch driver may well have been much closer to the podium fight. That is precisely why Verstappen described the Florida weekend as “the light” at the end of the tunnel—a tangible sign that Red Bull’s recovery path may finally be starting to take shape.
At Miami, Red Bull introduced a particularly substantial upgrade package, including a new front wing, revised sidepods, a modified floor, its own interpretation of the flexible rear wing concept, and updates to the steering system. That last change had been requested by the drivers for some time, as the previous setup was not delivering the level of feedback and confidence they wanted behind the wheel.
In fact, that steering modification proved to be arguably the most influential upgrade of the entire package, because Max Verstappen immediately felt a clear improvement, helping to completely change the complexion of his weekend. While the Dutchman had previously explained that the team’s first upgrades of the season, introduced in Japan, had delivered very little noticeable improvement, the signal from Miami was entirely different.
This time, the package delivered exactly what Red Bull had expected—not only in theory, but also on the stopwatch. It is not yet a complete breakthrough, and certainly not enough to declare Red Bull fully back in championship-winning form, but it is a meaningful indication that the Milton Keynes-based team may finally be rediscovering lost performance.
That assessment was not only confirmed by Max Verstappen, the driver who ultimately has to extract the car’s potential and rediscover confidence at the limit, but also by technical director Pierre Waché. It is not the first time Red Bull has suffered from correlation problems linked to outdated development tools, so much so that a new wind tunnel is already under construction.
For precisely that reason, receiving track confirmation that the updates worked exactly as simulations predicted was probably the best outcome Red Bull could have hoped for, because it provides a reliable platform for continued development throughout the season.
“Yes, it delivered what we expected. It is really the package itself that worked. And after solving other problems, that also brought extra performance from Max that perhaps we were not expecting,” the French engineer told Motorsport.com.
The reference is clearly to the fact that, with the latest steering modifications, Red Bull has given Verstappen a car that is not necessarily easier to drive, but certainly more predictable and more natural in its responses. That is a crucial distinction, because whether over a single qualifying lap when chasing the absolute limit, or over long race stints where consistency matters most, predictability can make a decisive difference.
This represents Red Bull’s first truly meaningful step forward of the 2026 Formula 1 campaign, especially when compared with McLaren and Ferrari, both of which also brought significant upgrade packages to Miami. Mercedes, along with several other teams including Haas, has taken a different strategic route, choosing instead to focus development resources on a major one-shot upgrade package expected to arrive in Canada.
That does not mean McLaren or Red Bull will arrive in Montreal empty-handed, but the scale of any further upgrades there is expected to be much more limited. The real focus is the European phase of the championship, where Red Bull’s targets extend beyond aerodynamic gains and into one of the most critical performance areas in modern Formula 1: weight reduction.
At the start of a new regulatory cycle, it is not unusual for some teams to begin the season above the FIA’s minimum weight threshold. Red Bull experienced exactly that situation back in 2022, when the team launched its car significantly overweight compared with key rivals, including Ferrari.
It is no secret that last year Red Bull engineers dedicated substantial resources to developing the 2025 challenger in order to keep Max Verstappen’s championship hopes alive until the final race. Laurent Mekies himself admitted that the team paid the price for effectively managing a double development programme.
It is entirely possible that Red Bull deliberately left some margin in certain components due to the completely new nature of the RB22 project and development delays accumulated during the design phase. That approach may have made the car easier to develop and more reliable in the early stages, but the downside is clear: extra weight translates directly into lost tenths on track.
That is why weight reduction remains a central objective for the team’s next major upgrade package. In Miami, Red Bull reportedly succeeded in significantly reducing the RB22’s excess mass, with paddock speculation suggesting the overweight figure may have been cut in half, bringing the car to roughly 6 kilograms above the effective minimum target.
The next objective is clear: reach the FIA minimum weight before the summer break and unlock the additional performance that comes with it.
“Yes, I think there will be another step. I don’t know exactly when, but we will have a weight reduction perhaps for Austria.”
That would gradually make Red Bull more competitive as the season develops, although Pierre Waché appears just as satisfied that the difficult opening phase of the campaign may now be behind the team. The technical director has openly acknowledged the pressure involved in reversing a challenging competitive situation, and Miami may have marked the first meaningful step in that process.
“It is not easy, and I am certainly disappointed by the result. I think the result [in Miami] does not show our actual pace. But it is good for the team to demonstrate that the car has speed and that we are back in the fight.”
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