Guenther Steiner Predicts Max Verstappen Will Not Win in 2026

Guenther Steiner has never been one to tiptoe around a verdict, and he’s just delivered one of his boldest yet: Max Verstappen, a four-time world champion, will go winless in 2026.

Speaking on The Red Flags Podcast in the aftermath of the Spanish Grand Prix, the former Haas team principal was asked in the show’s “Gas or Brake” segment whether Verstappen would finish the season without a single victory. 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.”

It was a striking line: Verstappen still on the rostrum, still “Super Max”, but boxed in by a Red Bull that Steiner simply does not see as a race‑winning package in 2026.

A champion stuck in sixth

The numbers tell their own story. Verstappen sits only sixth in the 2026 standings on 145 points, a huge 147 behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli. For a driver who once bent entire seasons to his will, it’s an unfamiliar vantage point.

His ceiling this year? Second place. He has three of them: Austria, Hungary and Spain. No wins. No sense of inevitability. Just a relentless grind to salvage podiums while others dictate the pace.

Spain underlined the problem. Verstappen finished second in Madrid, but it was a result built on circumstance rather than outright dominance. Polesitter Lando Norris saw his race unravel thanks to an ill-timed virtual safety car and a slow pit stop. Verstappen pounced, gained track position and then did what he does better than almost anyone: he defended.

On the new, tight Madrid layout, that was enough. Overtaking bordered on impossible, so once Verstappen was ahead, Norris could only stare at the back of the Red Bull and seethe at the timing gods. The Dutchman brought the car home in P2, but the performance gap was obvious.

Verstappen: “We are quite a bit down”

Verstappen didn’t sugar-coat it when he spoke to Sky Sports after the race. 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. In Verstappen, Red Bull still have one of the sharpest weapons on the grid. But a driver can only drag a car so far. If Mercedes and McLaren keep this level, he sees Verstappen chained to second and third places, condemned to watch the wins go elsewhere.

For a man who once oversaw a backmarker team fighting just to escape Q1, Steiner knows the smell of an underpowered package. His view is ruthless: Red Bull’s 2026 car, as it stands, is a podium machine, not a race winner.

A changing of the guard?

The wider context makes his prediction even more provocative. This isn’t Verstappen losing to one standout rival in a straight fight. It’s Verstappen being squeezed from both sides.

McLaren have turned Norris into a weekly threat. Mercedes, rejuvenated and front-loaded with young talent like Antonelli, are dictating the tempo of the championship. Verstappen, used to dictating terms, is now reacting to them.

The title race marches on to Baku for round 15, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix from 24–26 September, where the walls are close, the straights are endless and the margins are brutal. It’s exactly the kind of circuit where a top driver can sometimes transcend the limitations of his car.

Steiner doesn’t think that will be enough this year. Or any weekend in 2026.

The question now is simple and brutal: can Red Bull find a way to prove him wrong before an entire season passes without Max Verstappen standing on the top step?