Verstappen’s 2026 Season Looks Like the Worst Start of His Career, and He Is Not Hiding It

Max Verstappen is eighth in the Formula 1 drivers’ championship after two races, level on eight points with Racing Bulls’ Liam Lawson. He has not been this low in the standings at this stage of a season since 2018. He is also the most vocal critic in the paddock of the regulations that got him here, and the volume has been rising.



Following his retirement from the Chinese Grand Prix with a coolant fault while running sixth, Verstappen delivered his sharpest verdict yet on F1’s new 2026 formula.



“It’s terrible,” he told reporters in Shanghai. “If someone likes this, then you really don’t know what racing is about. It’s not fun at all. It’s playing Mario Kart. This is not racing.”



The central cause of his frustration is the 50-50 split between combustion and electrical power introduced for this season. The new regulations mandate that nearly half the car’s power comes from its battery pack, creating a pattern where drivers can gain significant ground by deploying electrical boost, then lose it again when the battery runs dry on the next straight. “You are boosting past, then you run out of battery the next straight,” Verstappen explained. “They boost past you again. For me, it’s just a joke.”



Red Bull’s problems run deeper than regulation philosophy, though. In Australia, Verstappen started from the back after crashing in qualifying, recovered to sixth, and watched teammate Isack Hadjar retire from what had been a promising position.



In China, the team lacked raw pace from the start. “The whole day has been a disaster, pace-wise,” he said after qualifying eighth for the Shanghai sprint, 1.7 seconds off Russell’s pole time. “No grip. Honestly I think that’s the biggest problem, no grip, no balance, just losing massive amounts of time in the corners.”



The team’s decision to develop the RB21 deep into 2025 while rivals had already switched their focus to the 2026 car may have contributed to the gap. Verstappen was asked about this directly and dismissed the parallel.



He stressed that Red Bull had made a similar trade-off between the 2021 and 2022 cars and remained quick regardless. But the data from these first two rounds does not support that comparison with any confidence.



Toto Wolff’s response, when Verstappen’s comments were put to him in Shanghai, was pointed without being unkind. “Max is really, I think, in a horror show,” Wolff said. “When you look at the onboard that he has in qualifying yesterday, this is just horrendous to drive, and you can see that. But it’s not the same with many other teams.”



Verstappen’s own brother-in-law Nelson Piquet Jr was equally blunt on a podcast this week, suggesting the criticism would evaporate if Verstappen were in a Mercedes. “If he were in the Mercedes car, he’d be quiet as a mouse,” Piquet Jr said. “You can be absolutely certain of that.”



Verstappen, for his part, insists his criticism would remain even from the front of the field, and that he had been raising the same concerns about these regulations since 2023. “I hope they don’t think like that,” he said of F1’s appetite for the new formula.



“It will come and bite them back in the ass.” He also added that the current ruleset is “fundamentally flawed” and that small tweaks cannot fix it. Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies acknowledged the shortcomings in China but expressed confidence that Japan would bring progress. That remains to be seen.
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