Can Red Bull Racing bounce back in 2026?

The 2025 Formula 1 campaign is now a write-off for Red Bull Racing, as Max Verstappen is currently 97 points down on Oscar Piastri, who leads the Drivers' Championship from teammate Lando Norris. The Constructors' Championship has also slipped from the Milton Keynes squad, with Verstappen their only points scorer, while Yuki Tsunoda—the ever-improving—is yet to show his worth after replacing Liam Lawson two races into the season.

With an underperforming car that only Verstappen can drive, clumsy trackside operations, the hemorrhage of personnel to other teams, and the situation behind the doors of Milton Keynes apparently far from ideal following Horner's sexting scandal, Red Bull have taken the decision to fire the Briton after 20 years at the helm, installing Laurent Mekies in his position.

And while achieving a turnaround in the final ten races of the 2025 season is not realistic, the question remains whether Red Bull Racing, who will be producing their own power unit in collaboration with Ford in 2026, can bounce back.

Former F1 driver Johnny Herbert explained: "The people that are now there, on the ground, the designers and aerodynamicists and the chassis guys, and even with the power unit as well, they've got to prove themselves now.

"A lot of other people that have proven that they were a very important part of the Red Bull have gone," referring to the departure of the likes of Adrian Newey, Rob Marshall, and Jonathan Wheatley.

"Now they've declined in a very short space of time, and it's how they rediscover the right mindset to be able to change their mentality to move it in a direction that is going to be more beneficial for 2026.

"That goes down to the aerodynamics and the chassis, but it also goes down to the power unit as well, which is going to be a massively big test because it's something they've taken on board themselves.

"That is a huge undertaking to be able to, one, produce a Formula 1 engine with all the technology that's involved, and two, to make it as good or better than the very experienced Mercedes-Benz, for example.

"But of course Red Bull are not going to be having any of that. They're just going to be this badged Ford engine, but done in-house. And it's going to be interesting to see if they can do that.

"Can I see a bounce back next year? No," Herbert concluded.

Verstappen confirmed that he would honor his Red Bull Racing contract in 2026 and will not activate any exit clauses, which is the smart thing to do, biding his time to see how the F1 landscape develops with the new regulations in 2026, but if what Herbert predicted turns out to be true, the Dutchman will not hang around for 2027.

(Quotes from Thunderpick)