Too much weight
The start of 2026 has been anything but simple for the Red Bull team. The Milton Keynes-based squad began the new regulatory era of the Circus having to deal with its own new power unit, built in-house and for which it is inevitably paying the price of being a novice. Another major problem that emerged in these first races, however, as it was in 2022, is that of weight.
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In fact, everyone in the paddock confirms that Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar’s car is significantly ‘overweight’. After the Chinese GP, it was hypothesized that the excess kilos compared to the limit imposed by the regulations were as many as 20. In reality, a recent analysis conducted by the website RacingNews365 estimated the excess weight of the Austro-British car at around 9-10 kg.
From Miami, everyone on a diet
The team led by Laurent Mekies has therefore started working hard to put the RB22 on a ‘diet’. In theory, the updates that should have solved these problems at least in part were planned for the Bahrain GP weekend, which, however, as is known, was removed from the calendar as well as – at least for now – that of Saudi Arabia. The introduction of the innovations that aim, among other things, to make the car lighter will therefore slip to the beginning of May, in the Miami GP weekend. This package should be worth at least a couple of tenths in lap time, those that Verstappen and Hadjar are currently leaving on the track precisely because of the extra kilos their car is carrying.
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