Steiner warns Verstappen may go winless in 2026 — and the problem is the power unit

In Madrid, Max Verstappen finished second, but that podium was built on luck and strategy. Lando Norris lost the lead due to a slow stop under VSC on a circuit where overtaking barely exists. Losing at Luzhniki taught me something a win never tells you: a result without context is a mirage. Former team principal Guenther Steiner predicted on The Red Flags Podcast's Gas or Brake segment that Verstappen will not win a single race in 2026. The standings support the warning: sixth, 145 points, 147 behind leader Kimi Antonelli. Three P2s in Austria, Hungary, and Spain show Red Bull has become a podium-without-win team. He's not good enough. He will be Super Max, he will be on the podium, but that's the limit, Steiner said. The most important signal is Verstappen's own analysis: the car is quite a bit down and there is a little bit of deployment missing. Under the 2026 rules — near 50/50 electrical split, no MGU-H — deployment is a core performance lever. If the problem is on the power-unit side, no aero upgrade can fix it. Empty stands stripped the sport to its skeleton: a 0.2–0.4s per-lap deficit, not a driver problem. Read Steiner's not good enough carefully: it is rhetorical. The car is the limit. Verstappen is overachieving. Madrid masked the truth because track position could not be attacked; on normal circuits, the podium may vanish. Three P2s clustered late in the European season hint at a stalled development curve. Spectators watch the move; I watch the game moving. The question is not whether Verstappen wins a race, but whether Red Bull Powertrains can solve the deployment issue before the season ends. Baku will start to answer.