Racing Bulls - On the Charge in 2026
Image credit: Red Bull Content Pool
As Formula 1 races towards the summer break and the conclusion of the first half of the 2026 season, the overarching pecking order in this brand new regulation era for the sport is becoming clearer and clearer. The field of twenty-two cars spread across eleven teams has three distinct parts to - the top, the middle and the bottom. While we’ve talked previously on Paddock Influence about both Alpine and Haas this season, it’s the third of those teams in the middle portion of the grid that is the focus for this article.
With a strong driver pairing, a stable pair of hands leading the team and a Championship winning sibling towards the sharp end of the field, Racing Bulls look set this season to at least equal, if not surpass, their best years in Formula 1 so far. Could this year finally be the year that the team emerges from the shadow cast by Red Bull and both establishes itself definitively as its own entity while taking the fight to the senior team?
Image credit: Red Bull Content Pool
Racing Bulls began its life in Formula 1 back in 2006 when it was known as Toro Rosso-Cosworth. Vitantonio Liuzzi and Scott Speed drove for the outfit that year with the former claiming their only point finish of the season at the United States Grand Prix, held then in Indianapolis. Despite points only being awarded down to eighth place back then, Liuzzi being lapped and being one of only nine cars to actually finish the race, it was enough to put them on the map. The team finished in ninth place overall that season out of the eleven teams competing with their sole point putting them above MF1-Toyota and Super Aguri-Honda.
Since then, the team has had a rollercoaster time in Formula 1. They won their first Grand Prix at the 2008 Italian Grand Prix with Sebastian Vettel at the wheel and the victory helped keep them ahead of their senior team, then Red Bull-Renault by the end of the season with a ten point margin. Other notable names that have driven for the team over the years include Daniel Ricciardo, Carlos Sainz and Max Verstappen. Pierre Gasly won their second Grand Prix, again in Monza, in 2020 and the team has enjoyed a number of podiums across their two decades in the sport since. The most recent of these came at last year’s Dutch Grand Prix where Isack Hadjar was able to hold off George Russell to finish in third.
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This year, the team enters its third year under the rebranded banner of Racing Bulls (officially the Visa Cash App Racing Bulls Formula One Team) and boasts a familiar but fresh driver line-up.
Liam Lawson is the first of those two drivers. In his second full season of Formula 1, his history with the sport goes back further than that. Prior to his entry into the pinnacle of motorsport, Lawson made his way up the ranks as much as any driver worthy of a shot in Formula 1. The New-Zealander was the 2019 Toyota Racing Series Champion before finishing in third place overall in Formula 2 in 2022 and in second place overall in Super Formula in 2023. Seven points separated him on that occasion from the Champion Ritomo Miyata who is now competing in his third full season of Formula 2 and is teammates with Colton Herta. Sometimes winning isn’t everything to get you into Formula 1.
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It was in that same year, 2023, that Liam Lawson made his Formula 1 debut. Stepping in to replace an injured Daniel Ricciardo, Lawson impressed immediately by finishing on the fringes of the points in Zandvoort and Monza. Then in Singapore, at a track that he’d never raced at before, he not only outqualified Max Verstappen in that year’s dominant Red Bull but only finished one place behind then veteran Red Bull driver Sergio Perez. His ninth place finish meant that he scored points in only his third race.
Ricciardo returned for 2024 only to be replaced permanently by Lawson for the final six races of the season. He scored points on his Formula 1 return in Austin and then did so again two races later in Brazil. His performances were enough for Red Bull to promote him into the senior team for 2025, replacing Sergio Perez. However, as even the most casual of Formula 1 fans knows, Red Bull has a reputation for its brutality with its drivers and after only two Grand Prix, Lawson was replaced by Yuki Tsunoda and demoted back to Racing Bulls where he has remained to this day.
This stability has proven to have worked wonders for Lawson as he has been allowed the time to develop and hone his craft. He came into his own at the tail end of the 2025 season, achieving a best result of fifth in Baku which was followed up by strong finishes of seventh and ninth in Brazil and Qatar respectively. It made perfect sense then when the team retained his services for 2026.
Image credit: Red Bull Content Pool
On the other side of the Racing Bulls garage this year is the sole rookie of the field, Arvid Lindblad. In 2023, the British driver won the coveted Macau Grand Prix before going on to win the Formula Regional Oceania Championship in 2025 and finishing in sixth place overall in last year’s Formula 2 Championship. At just eighteen years of age, Lindblad has already proven to be a very measured, calm and talented driver - you just need to observe how he carries himself in interviews with the media to understand this.
With a solid history behind him and a strong head on his shoulders, everyone’s hope was that Lindblad would be given the time needed to show what he was capable of and that the Red Bull of old didn’t rear its head and interfere too soon.
But here, there were important changes that meant that this time, maybe things would be different. Immediately after the British Grand Prix in 2025, long-time Team Principal of Red Bull Racing, Christian Horner, was fired from the team. His replacement was Laurent Mekies - formerly one part of a two-man team running Racing Bulls. Not every promotion between the two teams is driver related. At the end of the 2025 season, another heavyweight of Red Bull in the form of Helmut Marko was released from the team. Marko had had a heavy hand in the selection and development of the junior drivers within Red Bull’s ranks. Much of the responsibility for the tension, turmoil and drama surrounding the constant switching of drivers across both Red Bull and Racing Bulls across the decades has been laid at the feet of Horner and Marko. Once titans of the team that have been part of it since their inception, both are now gone.
With Peter Bayer now solely in charge of Racing Bulls as CEO (and having been there since 2023) and with Alan Permane now the Team Principal of the team with his former partner at the helm of Red Bull, a new dynamic has been established between the two teams and it comes at a crucial time for both. 2026 was the dawn of a new era in Formula 1 with the largest regulation overhaul in years. If ever there was a time for Racing Bulls to take the fight to both Red Bull and the other top teams, it was now.
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So far in 2026, that’s exactly what they’ve been doing.
Liam Lawson currently sits in tenth place overall in the standings this season. He has finished all but two races in the points and has a highest finish of sixth place in Monaco. Lindblad meanwhile currently lies in thirteenth place overall, having scored points on debut in Australia and with a highest finish of seventh place, also in Monaco. Monaco is important too because it became the start of what is currently a three Grand Prix streak of double points finishes for the team, having since scored in both Spain and Austria. While double points finishes do happen for the team (the last time prior to this season was in Brazil last year) more than one in back-to-back races hasn’t happened since the Singapore and Japanese Grand Prix back in 2015. But achieving this three races in a row has never been done before by the team - not even in 2008 when they beat Red Bull in the Constructor’s Championship.
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Racing Bulls currently sits in P6 overall in the Constructor's Standings, matching their highest ever finishing result that they’ve achieved a number of times in the past - with their sister team only two places above them. They’re already making history for themselves this year and boast possibly their strongest combined driver line-up ever. Couple that with the stable leadership across both Racing Bulls and Red Bull and you’ve got a very solid foundation upon which they’re already building in this new age of Formula 1. The senior team boasts the line-up of Verstappen and Hadjar which is the strongest it’s been since Sergio Perez’s first year with the team in 2021. But unlike then, should either of those two drivers head off to pastures new, both Lawson and Lindblad already seem more than capable of taking on the challenge of the top team, should Red Bull decide to promote from within.
Image credit: Red Bull Content Pool
Moreover, if they did, their replacement at Racing Bulls would likely be a strong one too. Red Bull junior Nikola Tsolov is two points away from the lead of the Formula 2 Championship this year and already has four victories to his name. Ayumu Iwasa is also very much an option, having won the Super Formula Championship last year and is within touching distance of making it back-to-back Championships this year too. Ernesto Rivera, fresh from a maiden win in Formula 3 is also an option down the line as is the driver that Racing Bulls supports in F1 Academy - Rafaela Ferreira.
All of this is to say that from the teams that wanted to capitalise on the new regulation set for 2026, Racing Bulls have certainly been one of the winners. Thirteen points separate them from Alpine at the moment and both Lawson and Lindblad are more than capable of getting onto the podium this year. A flashpoint like that could turn the fight for P5 on its head. While it may be a stretch to see them beat Red Bull again, their consistency may mean that the gap between the two at the end of the season is a lot narrower than many would have thought. At a time when both teams need to have a soft reboot to re-establish and re-determine their identities, both are going about it with aplomb and Racing Bulls are well and truly on the charge. It’s fantastic to see.