Max Verstappen believes he is getting closer to his first victory of 2026 as he nears the end of what could be his first win-less season in 10 years.
He has never failed to win at least one grand prix per season since Red Bull promoted him to their top Formula 1 team during 2016, his second year in the championship. However with eight rounds of the 2026 campaign remaining – and serious doubt over whether the final two will go ahead – Verstappen is yet to take a win.“I’m trying everything I can,” he said. “We are scoring quite a few podiums now, but I want to win. That’s what I’m here for.
“I’m getting close, but I want at least to win one race this year. I hope we can do it at some point.”
Red Bull’s performance has improved since the start of the season. Verstappen reached the podium just twice in the first nine rounds but has reached the rostrum in five of the last six.
He and team mate Isack Hadjar both reached the podium at the last round in Baku, Red Bull’s best performance of the season so far. However Verstappen believes the RB22 was flattered by that particular circuit.
“We have some solid results. I think also the parts that we [put] on the car in Baku, they worked well.
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“But we also know that Baku always has been quite a good track to us. It’s quite unique with the 90-degree corners, you don’t really have a lot of high-speed corners.”
Red Bull’s performance over the remaining races could have a significant bearing on the decisions they make on their new car for next year,” Verstappen added.
“We have to wait a little bit now in the coming races [to see] how our car is going to perform, which is also quite good for us probably to see all these different kinds of tracks. Because for next year we’ll probably learn a lot now over these coming races [about] what we need, what we want to do with the car.
“We’re anyway not fighting for the championship, so for us it’s a big learning curve, but of course the last few weekends have been a lot better at the start of the season.”
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