Guenther Steiner Predicts Max Verstappen Won't Win in 2026

Guenther Steiner has never been shy of a bold line, but this one lands like a hammer blow: Max Verstappen, four-time world champion and the defining driver of his generation, will not win a single grand prix in 2026.

Not one.

Speaking on The Red Flags Podcast after the Spanish Grand Prix, the former Haas team principal was asked in the show’s “Gas or Brake” segment whether Verstappen would really go winless across an entire season. Steiner didn’t hesitate.

“Gas, he will not,” he replied. “Mercedes and McLaren are too strong, and it's just the car. He's not good enough. He will be Super Max, he will be on the podium, but I think that's the limit. That's the limit of that car.”

A brutal assessment of both driver and machine, and a stark reflection of how sharply the balance of power has swung away from Red Bull.

From Dominance to Damage Limitation

Verstappen, once the immovable object at the front of the field, is now locked in a season of damage limitation. He sits sixth in the standings on 145 points, a huge 147 behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli. His year’s peak so far? Three second places — in Austria, Hungary and Spain.

For a driver who once turned victory into a weekly habit, those results feel like scraps. The aura of inevitability that surrounded Red Bull has gone; in its place, a car that can still fight, still threaten, but no longer dictate.

Spain underlined that reality.

In Madrid, Verstappen had to live off circumstance rather than raw superiority. Polesitter Lando Norris lost control of the race when an ill-timed virtual safety car and a sluggish pitstop shuffled him backwards. Verstappen pounced, claimed track position and then did what he does as well as anyone: he defended, he managed, he refused to blink.

On the new, tight circuit layout, overtaking bordered on impossible. Verstappen held Norris off and brought the Red Bull home in second. It was smart, it was clinical, but it was also telling. He didn’t have the pace to disappear into the distance. He had just enough to hang on.

‘We Are Quite a Bit Down Still’

Verstappen didn’t sugarcoat it when he spoke to Sky Sports afterwards. The stopwatch doesn’t lie, and he knows it.

“It's just looking at the lap times, we are quite a bit down still,” he said. “It's a mix of a lot of things, for sure maybe a little bit of deployment, but also the car itself that we still need to improve on, because when Lando was behind me he was flying. He was a lot faster, but just because of the nature of the track he couldn't get by.”

That’s the crux of Steiner’s argument. Red Bull, once the class of the field in straight-line speed, tyre life and race management, now looks boxed in. Mercedes and McLaren have dragged themselves to the front with stronger overall packages, and Verstappen, for all his aggression and racecraft, can’t drive around the deficit every Sunday.

Podiums? Absolutely. Title charge? Not this year. And if Steiner is right, not even a single win in 2026.

The Weight of 2026

Steiner’s prediction is anchored in a wider fear inside the paddock: that Red Bull’s current trajectory, combined with the looming 2026 regulation shift, could leave the team stranded in no-man’s land.

He isn’t talking about Verstappen losing his edge. He’s talking about a car that won’t let him show it.

“He will be Super Max,” Steiner said, and that line matters. The former Haas boss still expects Verstappen to drag results out of a difficult package, to live on the podium, to be relentless. But in Steiner’s eyes, that is where the ceiling now sits.

The Dutchman has built his reputation on smashing through ceilings. On turning “good enough” into “untouchable.” On winning races he had no business winning. Yet the current Red Bull, as seen in Madrid, doesn’t give him the tools to bend races to his will. It gives him just enough to survive when the race comes to him.

The contrast with Norris and McLaren, and with the resurgent Mercedes, is glaring. When Norris closed in at the Spanish Grand Prix, Verstappen could only watch the McLaren’s pace advantage in his mirrors and trust the circuit layout to save him. That is not the position of a man in the best car. It’s the position of a great driver hanging on against a faster one.

Baku and Beyond

The calendar rolls on. Round 15 of the 2026 season takes the paddock to the streets of Baku on 24-26 September, a circuit that has given Verstappen agony and ecstasy in equal measure over the years.

Street tracks can be chaotic. Safety cars, walls, slipstreams — they open doors that pure pace sometimes closes. On days like that, Verstappen’s instincts usually thrive. Those are exactly the kinds of races where a driver of his calibre can steal something special.

Steiner, though, is betting that even chaos won’t be enough to bridge the gap this time.

If he’s wrong, Verstappen will do what he has always done: tear up the script, rip through the traffic and remind everyone why he owns four world titles. If he’s right, the sport is staring at a remarkable inversion — a “Super Max” season built on consistency and podiums, but without a single Sunday that ends on the top step.

For a driver who has redefined winning in modern Formula 1, how long will he tolerate that?