What to expect – and what not to – from Red Bull’s Austria upgrade

With the new regulations in 2026, the development battle between the teams is playing a major role in shaping the pecking order, with outfits seemingly making bigger gains than before when they introduce new packages.

Ferrari’s upgrade helped it make a step forward in Barcelona – and Lewis Hamilton converted that into victory. In Austria, Red Bull is known to be preparing to unleash new parts.

But will that deliver the step the team is hoping for?

“The picture of the season is these performance variations based on who is bringing his upgrade,” said team principal Laurent Mekies. “Ferrari made a big step forward. Obviously, our next big one is in Austria. But it’s only as good as the real lap time on track it brings. Everyone in Milton Keynes has been working very hard for that package.”

This will be Red Bull’s second major upgrade of the year. The package delivered in Miami featured a complete redesign of the RB22’s sidepods and the team’s own version of a rotary rear wing, a concept similar to Ferrari’s, which team boss Fred Vasseur labelled “Macarena”.

It is unknown which parts will be revised this time, but Mekies does not believe this step alone will be sufficient to bring Red Bull into genuine contention for victories against Mercedes and Ferrari.

“There is no doubt that the Austrian package alone will not be enough,” he stated. “We know we’ll have some further steps needed. But what is important is that on that continuous closing-the-gap trajectory that we have been onto since post-Japan, is that we continue to get closer, that we don’t talk anymore about four tenths, but hopefully about less.”

The four tenths per lap is what Mekies estimates Red Bull still needs to find relative to its rivals. After the race in Miami, the Frenchman said his team had halved the gap to the frontrunners with its first upgrade.

One of the potential gains the Austrian package can deliver is further weight reduction, as Red Bull is still understood to be above the minimum weight allowed by the regulations. The Miami package also featured weight-saving measures, and back in May the team’s technical director Pierre Wache told Autosport that the plan was to reach the minimum weight allowed by the regulations– 768kg this year – with the Austrian package.

But when asked about the weight topic after the Barcelona race, Mekies sidestepped the question with a joke.

“Eat less,” he said, when asked whether the team’s plan was still on course. “That’s my plan. That’s my plan for Austria! And hopefully we get lighter there. Austrian food is good, I know. But the plan is to get the car to eat a little bit less there and to get on a bit of a diet.”

“Ferrari’s done a very good step”

Mekies was left impressed by Ferrari’s Barcelona upgrade package and reckoned the advantage Mercedes enjoyed in the opening races is gradually fading away.

Red Bull itself was not as competitive in Barcelona as it had been at some other tracks, as the circuit exposed some of the RB22’s weaknesses. Max Verstappen had a lonely race in Spain, finishing fourth almost 20 seconds behind Lando Norris. Isack Hadjar lost ground at the start but still recovered to sixth in a race where Red Bull clearly lacked pace compared to Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren, while remaining comfortably ahead of the rest of the field.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

“Well done to them at first for the first win with Lewis,” he said. “And the gap was closing up slowly between, I think, Mercedes and the teams chasing Mercedes in the last few races. Ferrari has done a very good step forward with their package. And, you know, for them to win a race on a track like Barcelona, it says a lot about the quality of chassis plus PU.

“You know, we are with the top four, fighting. Not every track layout we can fight for podium. So we could fight for podium obviously in Canada, in Monaco, but we couldn’t fight for podium here [in Barcelona]. That’s fair. Nonetheless, I think before the last few laps drama [and Kimi Antonelli retirement], we could beat one Ferrari and one McLaren today. It was the best we could have done.

“I think we were expecting that reality check in Barcelona. First track with the long straight, the mid-speed, high-speed corners. It’s probably the first time after China, Japan, where we come back to this sort of track. So we were expecting certainly a different performance compared to Monaco, where we could suddenly fight for pole.

“So, I think this weekend comes from progress, because what we are talking about is three or four tenths from pole or three or four tenths [a lap] from what you need to do to fight for the win. And that was certainly a very different picture at the beginning of the year on this sort of tracks. There is still a gap, no doubt, [on the] PU side, chassis side. And that’s what we need to fight for next.

“Now it’s not about one single thing anymore. It’s about finding a little bit of performance in mid-speed corner, in high-speed corner, on the straight line.”

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– The Autosport.com Team