Steiner predicts Verstappen will go winless through 2026: the limit is the car, not the driver

MADRID — In Red Bull's technical bay in Madrid, after the race had ended, there was a detail almost nobody noticed. Car number 1 was not wheeled in with the mood of a machine that had just lost a win, nor of one that had gained something meaningful. It was wheeled in with the bearing of an engine that had done exactly what its limits allowed, and no more. Max Verstappen climbed out, pulled off his helmet, and the first thing he said to his engineer was not 'we nearly won' but a purely technical sentence about what the car was still missing. P2 on the results sheet. But in the engineering room, everyone understood it was a borrowed position, not an earned one. It is precisely the gap between those two readings of the same result that is the subject of this piece. Because a few days earlier, Guenther Steiner — former Haas team principal, now a broadcast pundit — had said plainly something the whole paddock is thinking but few dare to put into words: Verstappen will not win a single race in 2026. Not 'it will be hard'. Not 'he'll need luck'. Winless. Every collapse has a precondition, it's just that few people bother to look beforehand. And the precondition here does not lie in the form of a four-time world champion. It lies in a line Verstappen uttered after Madrid, almost lost among the race headlines: 'maybe a little bit of deployment'. Seven words. But to me, it was the most important sentence of that entire week. Context: a game that has been turned upside down To understand why a prediction like Steiner's carries weight, it needs to be placed in its proper time frame. This is the first season under the 2026 technical regulations. That means the entire old order has been erased and redrawn. No more ground-effect era that Red Bull once dominated. No more of the car people used to call 'the Milton Keynes monster'. The 2026 rules changed one fundamental thing: the energy split. The internal combustion engine and the electrical portion are now nearly even, roughly 50/50, and the MGU-H heat recovery unit has been removed entirely. This is the detail anyone following F1 engineering must burn into memory: when the MGU-H disappears, so does the ability to recover energy from exhaust gases, and how a team manages, allocates and releases electrical energy over a lap becomes a central performance lever rather than a side detail. Add to that the 100 percent sustainable fuel requirement. None of this rewards the team strongest in aerodynamics. It rewards the team most mature in hybrid powertrain. Who is mature in hybrid? Mercedes, with more than a decade of experience and a powertrain department that has run smoothly through several regulatory cycles. And McLaren, running that very Mercedes power unit. On the other side, Red Bull is operating its own engine for the first time — the Red Bull Powertrains project in partnership with Ford — as an official manufacturer in its first year. This is no small detail. It is the single biggest variable of the whole season. The current standings reflect exactly that. Verstappen sits sixth on 145 points, 147 behind the leader. That leader is Kimi Antonelli, the Mercedes driver — meaning, counting back, the leader has roughly 292 points. That is a structural gap, not the gap of a few unlucky rounds. And Verstappen's best results so far are three second places — in Austria, Hungary and Spain — plus another P2 in Madrid. Four podiums. Not one top step. Steiner said nothing vague. He said it on a podcast format called Gas or Brake, part of The Red Flags Podcast — a binary game format where people are forced to choose yes or no. And he chose 'no'. It is an opinion statement, not an inside report. But it comes from someone who once sat in a team principal's chair and understands the cost of fixing mistakes at the power unit level. System mechanics: when 'deployment' becomes the centre of gravity Data only tells part of the story; the rest lies in whether people know how to listen. And I heard two things when Verstappen spoke about his car. He admitted losing 'quite a bit' of lap time to the front group, and he mentioned 'a little bit of deployment'. The first is a confession of a gap. The second is a clue to its origin. Let's stop here, because this is where most mainstream analysis goes wrong. When a driver is slower, the first reflex of the crowd is to think aerodynamics — not enough downforce, not enough straight-line efficiency, not enough balance in high-speed corners. That is old-era thinking. But under the 2026 rules, with electrical power making up half the total energy and no MGU-H, how you put power down out of a corner, how you sustain a deployment phase, how you allocate energy across a lap — that is where lap time is stripped away fastest. A deployment deficiency can look identical to an aero deficiency on a timing sheet, but its nature is entirely different. And the price of fixing it is entirely different too. This is the point I want on the operating table. If Red Bull are losing 0.2 to 0.4 seconds a lap because of downforce, they can bring a new wing, a new floor, new wheel arches to every race. If they are losing that much because of energy management, they are locked into power unit homologation tokens, reliability limits, and what the rules allow to be changed versus what they do not. One can be fixed in weeks. The other can take seasons. I must be careful here, as is my professional habit: this is an inference from a single statement, not a multi-source conclusion. If I have one rule about numbers, it is that a figure unverified by at least two sources should not be placed on an altar. But I also know that some signals don't come from a data sheet. They come from how a person talks about their car. And the way Verstappen talks — calm, technical, blaming no one, simply stating a phenomenon — shows he knows exactly what is missing, and knows it is not within quick-fix reach. The Madrid P2: a result prettier than the car There is an old lesson I always apply, and it is especially true here: a result should never be read apart from the context that produced it. Verstappen's P2 in Madrid is a perfect example. Look at how it came. Lando Norris — who had taken pole and was flying on a faster McLaren — lost the lead for two reasons outside Red Bull's control. First, the timing of the virtual safety car, a full-course slowdown that is the biggest strategic lever in this sport. Second, a slow pit stop by McLaren itself. Add those two together and the leader loses position, and the man behind is promoted. Then comes the nature of the Madrid circuit. This is a track with almost nowhere to overtake. When overtaking is near zero, the value of track position is multiplied. Verstappen's task was no longer attacking. It was only defending. And he defended well enough to hold position ahead of a faster Norris. Put all three pieces together — VSC timing, McLaren's slow stop, the circuit's overtaking geometry — and a clear picture emerges. That P2 does not prove the Red Bull has improved in pace. It only proves the Red Bull knew how to exploit track position at a race where track position was everything. That is a result prettier than the car itself. This is the kind of result that makes rushed analysts err. People look at the sheet, see P2, and conclude: 'Red Bull are back'. But looking at the substance, it was a points harvest from circumstance, not from capability. And if we assume that race had been held at an overtaking-friendly track, the script could have been entirely different. Verstappen might have finished off the podium. The points math: what a 147-point gap actually says A number can say more than a thousand commentaries — if people bother to read it correctly. Verstappen has 145 points, sixth. The leader has roughly 292. The gap is 147. At this stage of the season, that is no longer a gap for chasing. It is a gap for positioning. I want to read this number the way I once read tracking data: placing it beside other variables, not isolating it. The 147-point gap is produced by three forces at once. First, the inability to win — three P2s bring 18 points, not 25. Second, the presence of at least two broadly faster teams, meaning even good weekends are blocked by two other cars. Third, Red Bull's own consistency: they are not collapsing, not suffering mass DNFs, not making heavy strategic errors. They are simply not fast enough. This matters, because it rules out a convenient hypothesis. If Red Bull were losing points through failures or strategic blunders, one could say 'fix those things'. But if they are losing points because they are simply not fast enough, the story is different. In the data Steiner and Verstappen left behind, there is no trace of a reliability crisis or grid penalties. That, at a cautious level of inference, suggests Red Bull's 2026 power unit is not a weak machine. It is just not a fast enough one. And that is the more uncomfortable problem, because you cannot fix a reliable machine by swapping pieces. I once wrote a 14-page internal report during my time on the coaching staff in Milan, purely to prove that a sensor delayed by 0.2 seconds was enough to distort an entire dataset of goalkeeper build-up play. People laughed at me for such a small thing. But that is exactly how large gaps are made: from small things nobody bothers to look at. A tiny lag in energy allocation, repeated across hundreds of laps, compounds into a positional gap that cannot be made up on Sunday. First-year power unit: the trap nobody mentions A contract only looks good on paper when nobody has tried to fit it into a running system. And a new engine, in its first year, is exactly such a contract. This sounds like criticism, but it is not. It is an industry law. Look at history. New engine manufacturers, in the first year of any regulatory cycle, almost always start behind. Not because they lack talent, but because they must learn a system others have run through multiple cycles. Mercedes has over a decade of hybrid energy management data. McLaren directly inherits that knowledge base. Red Bull Powertrains, even with Ford's support, is in year one of a journey its rivals began a decade ago. This is not a temporary misfortune. It is a multi-year structural problem. And that is why I believe Steiner's prediction, however pessimistic it sounds, rests on firmer logic than an ordinary shock-commentary. He did not say Verstappen is poor. He said the competitive conditions have changed. And in this sport, competitive conditions sometimes decide outcomes before the car even rolls. The competitive group: when the order is inverted The current standings paint a picture that, had someone described it to me three years ago, I would have called absurd. Mercedes lead, with Antonelli — a young driver — on top. McLaren immediately behind, with Norris as the spearhead. Red Bull, the team that dominated the entire ground-effect era, is now a force good enough for podiums but not for wins. Steiner said it plainly: 'Mercedes and McLaren are too strong'. That phrasing implicitly places two teams above Red Bull. Meaning the title fight, if there is one, is happening between those two, with Red Bull as 'best of the rest'. That is a painful positioning for a team that was recently dominant. Antonelli's emergence at the top carries another layer of meaning: a generational handover unfolding before our eyes. When a regulatory reset happens, it is often the occasion for a new generation of drivers to rise. Antonelli is the symbol of that. And Verstappen sitting sixth while a young Mercedes driver leads is an iconic image of an inverted order. The contrarian angle: re-reading a misunderstood quote This is the section I want to give the most words to, because it is where the media routinely goes wrong, and where I want to plant a warning sign. Steiner said: 'He's not good enough. He will be Super Max, he will be on the podium, but I think that's the limit.' Read quickly, this sounds like an attack on a four-time world champion. Read slowly, one thing becomes clear: 'not good enough' is not a comment on Verstappen's ability. It is a comment on the car, expressed by talking about the driver. In English specifically and in sports commentary generally, this is a deliberate rhetorical device: when someone says a driver is 'not good enough' to win, they are saying that no driver sitting in that car could win. Misreading this quote inverts its entire meaning. And that is dangerous, because it turns a technical analysis into an emotional argument about a driver's worth. Red Bull have a car problem. Not a driver problem. The second thing I want to say against the crowd: the media fever around the 'Super Max winless' story is running faster than its underlying data. The reason is simple. This prediction comes from an entertainment podcast format where people are forced to choose yes or no. The speaker's motive is engagement, not revealing inside information. Steiner no longer works at Red Bull. He has no access to their internal data. So it is a heavyweight opinion, not an evidenced fact. A toppled championship order and an exploding media story should not be conflated. But here I must be fair, and here I think Steiner's critics are overconfident. The media fever may be inflated, but the underlying data is solid. Verstappen himself admits losing lap time. He himself mentions deployment. He has four P2s and not a single P1. Those are not the signs of a media wave. They are the signs of a real technical problem, set within a new regulatory context, and backed by an indisputable points gap. The overlooked risk: the hardest thing to fix I have always kept the rule of putting numbers on the operating table, not on the altar. And when you dissect with numbers, one thing becomes clear: the most underrated risk in this whole story is not the risk of Verstappen losing form. It is the risk of energy operation. I must pause and explain why this matters most. If a team lacks downforce, they can develop aerodynamics. It is costly and slow, but the path is clear. If a team lacks efficiency in its energy management system, they are pinched between two jaws. One is power unit homologation limits — you cannot change whatever you want. Two is reliability limits and finite development tokens. In a season where new rules apply, fixing an engine mid-cycle is not like fixing a wing. It is like heart surgery on someone running a marathon. That is why I believe Steiner's prediction, though delivered as a podcast game, actually lands on the deepest weakness. He did not say Red Bull are slow. He said their limit lies in the car. And if that limit lies in the engine, it is not something fixable with a weekend upgrade package. There is one more layer I want to raise, though I am well aware this is inference. Verstappen's public but controlled commentary on his gap may be a message-management strategy. He does not criticise the team. He issues no ultimatum. He merely describes a phenomenon. That keeps the story centred on the car rather than on internal conflict. In the short term, that is a way to reduce pressure on everyone. But in the long term, the patience of a four-time champion rarely exists independently of the team's competitive trajectory. A sustained winless run is historically the strongest precondition for future speculation. And this article has only planted the seed, not triggered it. What to watch There are three signals I will track over the coming rounds, and I advise readers to do the same. First, whether the 'deployment' issue is a fixable calibration matter or a structural limit. The way to tell is simple: if Red Bull improve markedly on the straights and out of corners, it is calibration. If the gap stays the same round after round, it is structure. I will be listening to post-race radio more than reading the timing sheets. Second, whether the winless run extends on overtaking-friendly circuits. Madrid gave Red Bull a podium through a no-overtaking track. Azerbaijan and the remaining rounds of 2026 will be the real test. On a track where track position no longer protects you, a defensive strategy will fail. And if the winless run extends through Baku, Steiner's thesis is confirmed painfully. Third, Verstappen's public language. When a driver shifts from technical description to visible frustration, that is the earliest signal of internal stability risk. Right now, his tone is calm. But calm is not infinite. An empty grandstand does not kill the race, but it takes away something numbers cannot measure. It is the same here. No figure can measure the feeling of a driver who knows he did everything right and still could not win. Three P2s are not failure. But three straight P2s, at a team once used to winning, is something heavier than failure: it is a truth about limits. To close, Steiner's prediction is not a prophecy. It is a calculation spoken as a sentence. Red Bull are in year one of a new engine project, in a regulatory cycle that rewards the mature, with two faster teams ahead, and with a driver extracting exactly the car's ceiling — no more. If that is not the precondition for a winless season, I do not know what is. But here is what I keep: the real question is not whether Verstappen wins a race in 2026. The real question is whether Red Bull can close their structural gap faster than the erosion of their driver's trust. Because in this sport, engines can be fixed, wings can be changed, but patience has no spare part.