Verstappen is sixth in the drivers’ standings on 109 points, more than 100 adrift of leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli, with four podiums and zero wins from the opening 11 races.
Red Bull is the only team in the top four of the constructors’ championship without a race victory this year, sitting fourth behind Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren.
A winless season for Verstappen would be the first of his Red Bull career. He has taken a win in every campaign since his debut year for the main team in 2016. Even in 2017, his one previous season where the wait ran deep into the calendar, he broke through at the Malaysian Grand Prix in round 15.
Four podiums, none from the top step
The 2026 tally is a study in near-misses. Verstappen has finished third in Canada and Belgium, and second in Austria and Hungary, extracting the maximum from a car he has repeatedly said is nowhere near the front-runners on outright pace.
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His most recent podium, at the Hungaroring, followed a Virtual Safety Car gamble and a late stint on fading Soft tyres.
“I think one of the hardest races of this year in terms of how I felt in the car,” he told reporters afterwards.
“I was still struggling with the same things as yesterday. So the car was just extremely oversteery.”
The RB22 problem Red Bull cannot fully fix
The underlying issue is the RB22 itself. The car was reported to be around 10kg over the minimum weight at the start of the season and, as of June, was still thought to be 6-8kg heavy despite upgrade packages in Miami and Austria.
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Former Ferrari race engineer Rob Smedley, reviewing the first half of the season, gave Red Bull a 5 out of 10 and said the recurring nature of the problems was the real worry.
“Red Bull should be just doing so much better. Like, they’ve had too many basic problems,” Smedley said.
“There is physically something different that pops out every weekend, and it’s always critical.”
Mekies confirms the 2027 pivot
The bigger blow to Verstappen’s chances of protecting the streak is where the money is going. Team principal Laurent Mekies has publicly signalled a shift of development resources toward the 2027 regulations, and earlier in the calendar year than Red Bull did in 2025.
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“At some stage we’ll need to make a call on the balance between this year and next year. And I expect that to happen earlier than what we have done last year, especially as the regulations are how they are,” Mekies said in Hungary.
“And it’s difficult to imagine that we will continue at that rhythm, but we nonetheless need to see what is the best way to try and close these last three tenths.”
A home weekend that will not come back
Zandvoort makes an already emotionally loaded story heavier. The 2026 Dutch Grand Prix runs from Friday 21 to Sunday 23 August, with lights out for the 72-lap race at 3pm local time on Sunday.
It is the final Dutch Grand Prix on the F1 calendar for the foreseeable future. Zandvoort drops off the schedule from 2027, meaning this is the last time Verstappen will race in front of the orange grandstands in the sport’s current era.
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The weekend is also a sprint round, handing him two racing chances rather than one to break his 2026 duck at a track where he has stood on the top step three times before.
Twelve rounds remain after Zandvoort. On current form, and with Red Bull already looking past this year’s car, each one will make the arithmetic of the streak a little tighter.
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