Still stuck at zero
After winning four consecutive World Championships and losing a fifth at the last race after nearly making a historic comeback in the championship, this year even for Max Verstappen the time has come to face a severe results crisis. The Dutchman is certainly the least responsible for this difficult period and his talent is not in question; however, the difficulties faced by Red Bull in adapting to the new technical regulations, combined with the leaps forward made by Mercedes and Ferrari, have relegated the Milton Keynes team to the role of the fourth force on track.
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Verstappen has managed, thanks to flashes of class, to collect four podiums so far this season, in Canada, Austria, Belgium, and Hungary (two second places and two third places), but the top step has so far remained taboo and the risk that this drought lasts until the end of the year is real. The Dutch champion himself explained that he “cannot work miracles“. Now that the ‘upgrade race’ has started among the top three teams in the standings, the risk is that the gap of the RB22 from its direct rivals will widen instead of narrowing.
The worst ‘streak’ of the last decade
The 12 consecutive races that Verstappen has spent without crossing the finish line first represent his second longest streak of GPs without wins since he has been racing for Red Bull. For the first, you have to go back almost a decade, when between the 2016 and 2017 seasons the then very young #33 went through 30 Grands Prix without victories. A streak that started with the 2016 Monaco GP – following his historic triumph in Barcelona – and ended with the victory at the 2017 Malaysian GP.
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Another impressive statistic is that Verstappen, since racing for Red Bull, has never finished a season without winning at least one race. In this 2026 season, he still has 11 attempts left (or 10, depending on how the calendar changes) to keep this positive streak alive. However, if the car’s performance remains as seen in Zandvoort, it seems difficult to imagine a realistic chance of victory for Verstappen in one of the upcoming events, unless he takes full advantage of a ‘crazy race’. Even the best of all, in this F1, cannot work miracles without a car up to the task.
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