Red Bull · QUICK TAKE
One year on, Red Bull's structural reset is not showing up where it counts
Sacking Horner was meant to stabilise the team. Nine rounds into 2026, the points table tells a different story.
The assumption when Red Bull removed Christian Horner was that instability was the problem. Fix the leadership, fix the team. Twelve months later, with nine rounds of 2026 complete, the evidence on the timing sheets does not support that thesis. Red Bull sit fourth in the constructors’ standings on 128 points, trailing Mercedes by 205 points. Neither driver has won a race. The management has changed; the results have not recovered.
It is worth being precise about what the numbers actually show, because the decline did not begin with Horner’s exit. In 2025 Verstappen scored 421 points and finished second in the drivers’ championship, separated from Lando Norris by just 2 points at the final round. Red Bull finished third in the constructors’ on 451 points, well behind McLaren’s 833 but ahead of Ferrari and everyone else. That was a team still capable of a title fight, even if it was fighting from behind for much of the year.
The 2026 campaign is a different register entirely. Verstappen has three retirements, in China, Monaco, and Britain, each one converting a potential points haul into zero. Those three blanks are not minor misfortune. In a championship where Mercedes have been consistently converting results, dropped Sundays compound. Verstappen’s 67 points across nine rounds is a figure that reflects not a driver in decline but a car that cannot yet be relied upon to finish, let alone fight for victories.
Isack Hadjar has been a genuine positive in this context. The Frenchman has 52 points and, unlike several of his predecessors in the second Red Bull seat, has not been swallowed by the car or the comparison to Verstappen. His fourth in Monaco and fifth in Canada and Britain suggest a driver who is finding his footing rather than losing it. That matters, both for the team’s constructor points and for its credibility beyond the Verstappen question. But Hadjar’s steady accumulation also makes the team’s overall position look worse: two drivers scoring consistently and the team is still fourth.
The technical picture is complicated by the scale of the rule change. Every team is navigating 2026’s new regulations, and Red Bull’s own power unit programme is among the variables. Reports from within the paddock suggest the engine project has had an encouraging start relative to other new programmes, though driveability and shift issues have drawn vocal criticism from Verstappen himself over several race weekends. A brand-new power unit in a year of sweeping regulation change is not a small ask; the question is how quickly the team closes the gap between encouraging and competitive.
What is harder to explain away is the political context. Leadership transitions in Formula 1 rarely resolve cleanly, and the concerns that surrounded Red Bull before Horner’s departure have not simply evaporated. Verstappen’s future remains the subject of persistent paddock speculation. His patience with a recovery project, and his relationship with a team that no longer has the figures he originally built his run of four championships alongside, is a live question. Laurent Mekies inherited a team still capable of front-running pace in theory, but also a team whose off-track dynamics had become as much a story as the on-track results.
The Ferrari comparison is instructive here. Fred Vasseur took over at Maranello at the start of 2023, and the full effect of his key signings and structural changes only became visible in 2025. Large teams with deep infrastructure do not pivot quickly; the cultural and technical changes that define a new era take multiple seasons to settle. Mekies faces a version of the same curve, except that his window may be shorter, given that Verstappen’s contract situation and the gap to the championship leaders create urgency that Vasseur did not face in quite the same form.
The standings after nine rounds frame the challenge clearly. Mercedes lead on 333 points. Ferrari sit second on 255. McLaren are third on 179. Red Bull’s 128 keeps them ahead of the midfield but out of the conversation at the front. The gap to Mercedes, at 205 points, is not one that closes through incremental improvement. It requires a step change in both car performance and reliability.
None of this makes the Horner removal a mistake in isolation. The circumstances of his departure were specific, and the team’s structural situation before it was clearly unsustainable. But removing a source of instability is not the same as creating a platform for success, and the two things should not be conflated. A calmer management structure is a precondition for recovery, not the recovery itself.
For the second half of the season, the requirement is unambiguous. Red Bull need Verstappen to convert race weekends into points rather than retirements, and they need the car to show that the gap to Mercedes is shrinking rather than fixed. Hadjar can keep scoring, but the team cannot close 205 points on the back of two drivers finishing fifth and sixth on a good day. A win, or at minimum a consistent run of podiums, is the only evidence that would shift the narrative. Without it, the question one year on from Horner’s sacking stops being about management philosophy and starts being about whether the car is capable of competing at the front at all.
The structural reset bought Red Bull time; the second half of 2026 will show whether they used it.