Max Verstappen heads to a circuit he has won twice and rides a wave of momentum from his first podium of 2026 — but the F1 Nation podcast panel were unsparing about Red Bull's Monaco prospects, calling them simply too big an ask.
The Dutchman's third place in Canada carried real significance as the maiden podium for the Red Bull Power Trains engine programme. Yet James Hinchcliffe insisted the result masked a car that is still well short of the front, and that Monaco lays bare its biggest flaw.
"Too big," Hinchcliffe said when asked whether Red Bull could deliver in Monaco. "Compliance is so important in Monaco, and that was one of the biggest complaints that Max had in Montreal."
Hinchcliffe was adamant the Montreal podium needed context, with Verstappen running off the leaders' pace and reeled in late.
"It took a Mercedes DNF and a double McLaren strategy blunder to even be in the conversation," he said. "He was tracked down by — I mean, what was that gap that Hamilton closed up? Six, seven, eight seconds, something like that. That podium comes with an asterisk beside it for sure. I just don't see that car being as competitive as the first three teams in Monaco."
Compliance — keeping the car composed over kerbs and bumps — is the prized quality on the streets of Monte Carlo, and it is the very thing Verstappen has been short of. A car that cannot soak up Monaco's relentless surfaces robs a driver of the confidence the lap demands.
There was a single thread of optimism. Jolyon Palmer highlighted a genuine improvement Red Bull unlocked between the sprint and qualifying in Canada.
"The only saving grace for Red Bull that I saw was the change they made from the sprint to qualifying, where they found a good chunk of that compliance," Palmer said. "Looking through the sector times again, Max and Isaac Hadjar as well were really quick in the first sector. So that's the only little bit of hope I could see for them — maybe they did find something there and it brought them closer towards the front."
Palmer's warning was that the step only matters if it carries onto a circuit as singular as Monaco, and that Red Bull have repeatedly started weekends behind.
"We'll only know when the car hits the ground," he said. "I feel like they need to start better off than they have done recently."
It is a far cry from Verstappen's previous Monaco triumphs, on a track where grid position is everything and racecraft barely registers. But the panel's verdict on the 2026 Red Bull — short on downforce, short on compliance and dependent on chaos for its best day of the year — offered little encouragement.
With his future beyond 2026 the talk of the paddock, another quiet weekend on a track he has mastered would only intensify the speculation. Monaco, the panel agreed, is unlikely to hand Red Bull the answers they crave.
Source: newsformula.one