Max Verstappen told reporters at the Circuit of the Americas that his two-stop plan on Sunday had “not been agreed,” a complaint pointed enough that Red Bull are now picking the race apart internally. The United States Grand Prix on 25 October was won by Andrea Kimi Antonelli from pole, with Charles Leclerc second and Verstappen home 17.485 seconds back in third.

The flashpoint was the second stint. Red Bull put Verstappen on a second set of softs rather than the hard, and the degradation that followed cost him any chance of running with the leaders.

Laurent Mekies told reporters he had not heard Verstappen’s remark but accepted the call warranted a second look.

“It is probably one of the things we will review together,” he said.

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What Mekies would not do was blame the tyres. He pointed instead to Antonelli, who converted pole into his ninth win of the season and a race he controlled from start to finish.

“I think Kimi had more pace than us today; I don’t think we can use any excuse of tyres or of strategy,” Mekies told gpblog.

Hadjar on hards offers a glimpse of the road not taken

A comparison inside Red Bull’s own garage sharpened the question. Isack Hadjar ran 31 laps on the hard compound after an opening stint on softs, an alternative path the team never explored with Verstappen. Hadjar finished sixth. Whether a harder tyre would have brought Verstappen any closer to Leclerc, who was four seconds up the road rather than seventeen, is the point the review will have to answer.

The pit wall itself is a work in progress. Hannah Schmitz has taken over as head of strategy after Will Courtenay’s departure to McLaren, and race engineer Tom Hart made his first calls to Verstappen in Austin as Gianpiero Lambiase prepares to leave for McLaren.

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A title already gone, a car Red Bull want to tear up

The scrutiny lands on a team whose season is effectively over at the top. Antonelli’s win moved him to the brink of the championship: the 20-year-old Italian leads George Russell by 123 points with 125 left on the table, and only needs ninth or higher at the Mexico City Grand Prix to be crowned the youngest world champion in Formula 1 history. Verstappen, fourth in the standings on 236 points, has been mathematically eliminated.

Red Bull’s answer is not the current car. Technical director Pierre Waché has told the team’s engineers to design the 2027 RB23 almost from scratch under the new technical regulations, saying “more or less close to nothing will transfer” from the RB22. The redesign, he conceded, is “not good for the budget cap,” but the team believes the gains justify it.

Mekies, meanwhile, has just signed a contract extension that ties him to Red Bull as team boss until 2031. His first public outing after that announcement was in Austin, where he had to defend both his strategy call and his driver’s unhappiness with it in the same media session.

The next test comes quickly. Lights out for the Mexico City Grand Prix is on Sunday, 1 November, where Antonelli can clinch the title and Red Bull will have the review’s findings, if not the fix, to carry into the race.

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