I heard the Honda RBPT engine groan on Friday night at Monza, but it wasn't the powerful sound of a winning machine. It was the sigh of a team losing its way. When Max Verstappen pressed the radio button, his voice carried not excitement but a long list of complaints: brakes not working, rear downforce lacking, the car bouncing like crazy. I heard the grass grow in the night, because the stands had no one to drown it out. And there, at the Temple of Speed, I realized: Red Bull isn't just slower than McLaren or Ferrari—they're slower than their own customer team.

Look at the FP2 timesheet. Both RB22s are behind Racing Bulls and Haas. That's not an accident. That's a structural signal. When you're a three-time consecutive world champion team, and your car is slower than your customer's car on the same engine, the problem isn't the engine. It's the chassis. It's the design. It's the philosophy.

I've been following F1 since 2026. I've seen Williams collapse, Ferrari rise, Mercedes dominate and then vanish. But rarely have I seen a top team lose direction as quickly as Red Bull now. From Zandvoort to Monza, the balance issue persists. Pierre Wache, the technical director, admits: 'It's a little bit like Zandvoort, but maybe a bit different.' A bit? When you can't pinpoint the problem after two races on two completely different track types, it's not a setup issue. It's a concept issue.

Ayumu Iwasa, the young Japanese driver replacing Verstappen in FP1, provided a chillingly accurate description: 'On low speed, it was okay. But on high speed, it was quite tricky to drive, like a kind of disconnected car balance.' That's the classic sign of ground-effect floor stall—the Venturi tunnels under the floor losing their sealing vortex, causing sudden downforce loss. Mercedes struggled with it throughout 2026-2026. Now it's Red Bull's turn.

Every museum has to clean its storeroom one day, and Red Bull just swept theirs. Adrian Newey left, Jonathan Wheatley moved to Audi. Wache remains, but can one man keep a sinking ship afloat? His contract runs until 2028, but when technical problems persist, the technical director's seat gets hot.

But here's the interesting part: Racing Bulls is faster than Red Bull. That sounds like bad news, but it's actually a positive signal. If Racing Bulls runs well on the same RBPT engine, the problem isn't the engine. It's the RB22 chassis. That means Red Bull can fix it if they find the root cause. The question is whether they have enough time and resources under the cost cap to do so.

Tactics are not mummies—don't wrap them in museum glass. Red Bull has been too accustomed to winning with a superior concept. Now that concept has been caught and surpassed. They need to change, but changing mid-season under cost cap pressure is a difficult puzzle.

I remember my article about Löw in 2026, when Germany was eliminated from the World Cup due to tactical stubbornness. I was ridiculed, but two weeks later Kicker quoted my analysis. Red Bull is at a similar crossroads. They can keep believing in the old concept and hope it works, or they can bravely change. History teaches us that stubbornness in top-level sport often leads to failure.

There are silences on the track that speak louder than any blockbuster contract. The silence from the Red Bull garage after FP2 says it all. They have no answers. They only have promises to 'evaluate components' and 'make choices.' But when Wache says 'I'm never confident,' that's a rare confession from a technical director.

Will Red Bull make it through Q3 at Monza? I doubt it. If they do, it'll be a miracle. If not, this will be the death knell for their 2026 season. And the bigger question: How long will Max Verstappen, a three-time world champion, be patient when his car is no longer competitive?

I don't have the answer. But I have a feeling: what we saw at Monza on Friday is just the beginning. Red Bull is losing its way. And in F1, once you lose the path, it's very hard to find it again.

Duong Khoa is a former F1 journalist with 38 years of experience, currently based in Munich covering sports for the German market. He has followed Red Bull since the team's early days.