McLaren boss Zak Brown reckons it would be “very foolish” to discount Red Bull after a poor start to the 2026 Formula 1 campaign because the competitive order will only converge.
The Austrian outfit has slipped into the midfield this year as it is sixth after three rounds with only 16 points, causing Max Verstappen, who is yet to score a podium, to be incredibly frustrated.
This comes at the start of a new regulation cycle which has partly shaken up the order and caused the gap between the top and bottom to increase; the F1 grid was separated by 1.235s in Q1 at the 2025 Australian Grand Prix, compared to 3.737s in 2026.
So as is the case with any rules era, teams should converge over time as they understand the new cars better and apply updates – McLaren being a great example of that.
It struggled at the start of the ground-effect period in 2022 before eventually claiming the 2024 and 2025 titles, so that is why Brown is not discounting other teams just yet, particularly when many will bring upgrades to this weekend’s Miami GP.
“It would be very foolish to write Red Bull off, I also think Audi’s done a very good job,” said the McLaren CEO, whose team is third in the standings and 30 points ahead of Red Bull and 44 clear of eighth-placed Audi.
“So I think it would be foolish to not think the other teams are going to move up the grid quickly. Things are only going to consolidate over time, not widen.
“We see how quickly the sport can change and how people quickly can get competitive and then sometimes not.”
Zak Brown, McLaren
Photo by: Kym Illman / Getty Images
Red Bull has suffered quite the decline since its domination of the 2023 season when it won 21 of 22 grands prix, breaking records like the most wins and points (860) in a campaign.
But then it was outdeveloped by its rivals as the ground-effect era progressed, while Red Bull also underwent a huge transformation of personnel as many were poached by other teams.
McLaren signed Rob Marshall and Will Courtenay with Gianpiero Lambiase also set to join, Jonathan Wheatley headed to Sauber (now Audi), while Adrian Newey left for Aston Martin.
Laurent Mekies also replaced Christian Horner as team principal midway through 2025, which was also Helmut Marko’s final year at the organisation, meaning it is quite the transformation.
So speaking about what Red Bull needs to do, particularly with it being the first year of the team developing in-house power units, Brown said: “They have to kind of do a little bit of a reset. They lost a lot of people: Christian, Wheatley, GP [Lambiase] eventually, Newey.
“So much what I came into, which was a different situation because they were very competitive, but the majority of the pitwall’s changed.
“I rate Laurent, I think he does a very good job. He’s technical, he’s young and he’s got to rebuild the people that he lost and rebuild the team.
“I have no doubt he will, and much like McLaren had an immense amount of talent that just needed to be unlocked, I think that’s probably the same as Red Bull.
“They’ve been very dominant up to not very long ago, so there’s a lot of talent in there and I think he’ll just need to get it redirected.”
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