Red Bull has conceded that its troublesome starts are unlikely to improve significantly before the end of the 2026 Formula 1 season, with Laurent Mekies confirming that a lasting solution will require substantial hardware changes for next year.
The admission follows another frustrating weekend for the team at the United States Grand Prix, where Isack Hadjar finished sixth but renewed his criticism of the RB22's clutch system, describing it as fragile and ill-equipped to cope with temperature variations.
Launch performance has been a persistent weakness for Red Bull throughout the campaign, costing Max Verstappen and Hadjar valuable ground against their rivals at Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes.
Although the team has made progress in other areas, the inability to get away cleanly remains an obstacle as the RB22 becomes increasingly competitive at the front.
Mekies acknowledged that the problem extends well beyond a single component, complicating efforts to eliminate the deficit before the season concludes.
A clutch redesign required to fix Red Bull's starts
Hadjar was particularly blunt after Sunday's race in Austin, insisting that his recurring launch difficulties were not the result of mistakes behind the wheel.
“I do everything perfectly in terms of procedure, and then I just have like clutch over-delivery. And these things are just out of my control,” the Frenchman told Sky F1.
“It needs a redesign because at the moment it’s too fragile and it’s not coping well with temperatures. It’s a real struggle.”
Mekies agreed that improving the team's starts was a considerably more complicated task than addressing a straightforward setup issue.
"The start is a slightly more complex issue to solve," the Red Bull chief told reporters in Austin.
"The staff performance is going across pretty much all of the departments of the company, probably except aerodynamics. It's the engine, it's the gearbox, it's the clutch, it's many things.
"We have seen from the beginning of the season that we are not the benchmark in terms of launch performance. As much as we have reduced the gap to the competition, and you may remember how bad our starts were at the beginning of the year, we are still not the benchmark.
"The fact that the car in the meantime has improved a lot and is fighting closer to the front makes that deficit even more painful now because the competition around us is very strong.
"So, on one side, I'm confident that we will continue to reduce the gap to the competition from now to the end of the year because every race we learn, and every race we come up with small ways to close the gap.
"On the other side, I equally know that we will not be the benchmark before the end of the season, that it will require some significant design and hardware changes, and that this is something that we will only see next year."
The distinction is significant for Red Bull. Incremental improvements may limit the damage over the remaining races, but the team does not expect to eliminate the underlying weakness before the 2027 campaign.
Radio failures add to Red Bull's frustration
The clutch problem was not Red Bull's only headache in Austin. Recurring radio dropouts also disrupted communications with Verstappen and Hadjar, leaving both drivers without pit instructions at times and marking the second consecutive race affected by the issue.
Mekies admitted that Hadjar was justified in voicing his frustration, while acknowledging that Red Bull had yet to identify the root cause.
"There is some truth in what Isack is saying, meaning we are all frustrated to struggle for the second race in a row with the radio issues," said Mekies. "It's making everyone's lives very difficult.
"It is true that it's something that we would like to fix quite quickly because it's an item that should be working without using too much of our energy, so he's right on that one.
"And if we understood it, we would have solved it, but we don't fully understand why we are being hit by these issues.
"I have to admit that the competition is doing a better job than us because we can obviously hear everyone's radio, and we have been struggling more than we would have liked to."
Red Bull therefore faces two distinct challenges: a clutch system that requires a substantial redesign and a communications problem that remains unexplained.
While Mekies expects continued incremental progress with the starts before the end of the season, the fundamental hardware solution will have to wait until 2027.
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