Chandhok on Red Bull ‘struggles’: “Don’t think they’re that far behind”

Red Bull is no longer the quickest team on the Formula 1 grid. In fact, it hasn’t quite been the fastest team since the Miami Grand Prix in 2024, which was won by Lando Norris in the McLaren. From that moment on, we’ve seen McLaren vastly improve, whilst Red Bull had to watch it happen. Although Verstappen has been able to maximise his results so far, the four-time world champion has been vocal about not feeling completely comfortable in the RB21.

Chandhok doesn’t think it’s as black and white as it may seem on first glance. “Are they struggling quite a bit?”, he wondered in an interview with GPblog. “I mean, they’ve won in Japan and Imola. They were on pole in Miami, they were on pole in Jeddah. Imola was the first race in a year where Max seemed to have a car that was a match in terms of race pace for the McLaren. Are they really struggling that much, or are the expectations just different?”, he asked. “This thing of Red Bull struggling and Max struggling, I feel like it's become a narrative that people are saying.”

He continued: “The car can't be that bad, if he was on pole in Jeddah and [in the race] only got beaten by Oscar by two seconds, with a five-second penalty.” The Indian former driver argued that Verstappen could have actually won the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix if he had a better start without a time penalty, which then would have given him two wins out of the first five races. “And he was second in Australia.”

“What I’m saying is - I think they're not as good as McLaren, but I don't think they're that far behind.” Chandhok thinks that the main challenge for Red Bull is that they currently only have one driver who’s able to extract performance out of the car, whereas McLaren have two. “The car has a very narrow operating window where one driver can get performance. That's what it is. So I don't think it's fair to say that they are struggling. I think it's just that people got used to them dominating.”

Besides the challenges on track, Red Bull is also dealing with its fair share of hardship outside of it. We’ve seen a lot of important staff members leave the team over the past few years: Jonathan Wheatley, Dan Fallows, Adrian Newey and Rob Marshall, to name a few. On top of that, the team is still dealing with the aftermath of the controversy surrounding team principal Christian Horner and the internal struggle between the Thai and Austrian sides of the team.

Verstappen’s future within the team is another big if. The Dutch driver is rumoured to have an exit clause that could allow him to leave Red Bull early. It remains to be seen if Verstappen can actually leave, and if so, if he wants to leave. With a complete overhaul of the technical regulations, a team swap for 2026 might not be ideal. If the reigning world champion does decide to leave, that will be a big change, admits Chandhok.