Back in May, during the Miami Grand Prix, Red Bull Racing introduced a new update to the rear wing of the car that basically inverted the rear wing when straight mode was turned on. This update seemed to be influenced by Ferrari who brought something similar to pre-season testing in Bahrain. This unique design was labelled by the media as the "Macarena wing".
With a completely new set of regulations for the 2026 season, we expected to see some out of the box updates on the cars. The inverted rear wing is just one of them. The concept behind it is that, in addition to the reduction of drag, the inverted rear wing will push the airflow down to the ground which will lift the car, making it lighter.
While it seemed as though the new rear wing was giving a few points of performance to the Red Bull cars, the Macarena wing was absent on both of the RB22s during the Belgian Grand Prix. Here's why.
The real reason Red Bull decided to opt against the inverted rear wing
Ever since the inverted rear wing model was introduced, Red Bull have been performing better than they did at the start of the season. While the model did seem to increase the performance of the RB22, there was a reliability issue that was discovered over the past couple of races.
During the qualifying session at Austria, Max Verstappen suffered a serious accident at the final sector while coming out of a straight mode zone. While taking a high speed corner, he lacked rear downforce, causing a huge moment of understeer that sent him into the wall. The same thing happened again during the very next weekend in Silverstone, except this time, it was during the race.
After two back-to-back incidents cause by a lack of rear downforce while coming out of a straight mode zone, Red Bull decided to switch things up and forego the inverted rear wing model. Despite this, the team did not seem to lack performance at the Belgian Grand Prix. Max Verstappen qualified 2nd and finished 3rd, while his teammate Isack Hadjar finished 6th despite starting last due to grid penalties for changing various components in his car.
Can Max Verstappen still compete for the Championship?
As it stands, Verstappen is 113 points behind the Championship leader, Kimi Antonelli. While this gap does seem to be drastic, if anyone can close it, it's Verstappen. Last year, the Dutch driver was caught in a similar situation with the McLaren drivers. At one point during the season, he was 104 points behind the Championship leader. He only lost the title by 2 points at the final race in Abu Dhabi.
But if Verstappen hopes to compete for the title, Red Bull needs to step up their game. The team have made a lot of progress between now and when the season first started. However, there is still a long way to go to catch Mercedes and Kimi Antonelli.
If Max is given the car he needs to win races, there is no doubt that he will be there every weekend to make another title run. It will be interesting to see how Red Bull adapt to the challenge. We will be entering the 3-week long summer break after the Hungarian GP this weekend. This will give Red Bull and Verstappen a chance to reanalyze their situation and continue developing the car.
