‘I’m getting close’ – Verstappen determined to win ‘at least one’ race in 2026

Max Verstappen has set out his aim to “at least win one race this year”, with the Dutchman encouraged that he is getting close to that target following a series of podium finishes.

Red Bull currently sit in fourth place of the Teams’ Championship, the squad having faced a trickier first half of the season than their rivals at the front. However, the Milton Keynes-based outfit look to have made progress during recent Grands Prix, culminating in a 2-3 result for Verstappen and team mate Isack Hadjar in Azerbaijan.

Verstappen narrowly missed out on claiming a first victory of the campaign on that occasion, having crossed the line less than two tenths behind winner George Russell.

When quizzed during media day at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia on the fact that he alone has outscored Ferrari and McLaren across the last three races, the four-time World Champion voiced his hope of returning to the top step whilst acknowledging that there is still work to do.

“Unfortunately, we're not outscoring Mercedes,” said Verstappen. “They're actually the fastest ones, or at least they were for most of the season. But yeah, I'm trying everything I can. We are scoring quite a few podiums now, but I want to win.

“That's what I'm here for, and I'm getting close, but I want at least to win one race this year, so I hope we can do it of course at some point. We have some solid results.

“I think also the parts that we got on the car in Baku worked well, but we also know that Baku always has been quite a good track to us. It's quite unique with the 90-degree corners, you don’t really have a lot of high-speed corners.”

Verstappen conceded that the remaining races in 2026 could prove particularly valuable when it comes to making preparations for next season.

“We have to wait a little bit now in the coming races [to see] how our car is going to perform which is also quite good for us probably to see all these different kind of tracks, because for next year we'll probably learn,” he explained.

“We'll learn a lot now over these coming races of what we need, what we want to do with the car. We're anyway not fighting for the championship, so for us it's a big learning curve. But of course the last few weekends have been a lot better than at the start of the season.”

Pushed on whether looking to 2027 is a key motivator for Red Bull going forward – with the gap to Mercedes potentially still too large to close ahead of the Silver Arrows bringing an upgrade to the Bahrain Grand Prix – Verstappen responded: “Yeah, probably.

“I mean, normally, if you bring an upgrade, it should go faster, so with them already being at the pace that they are, it will probably be very tricky. But yeah, it doesn't matter. Every single weekend, we'll try and do our best and we'll see where that leads us this weekend.”

Verstappen was the most recent driver to win at the Sepang International Circuit during its last F1 event in 2017, and the Dutch driver holds some good memories from the circuit.

“I always enjoyed racing here because I think I really liked the track layout,” the 29-year-old said. “It was not very straightforward because there's always high degradation, hot in general, so quite uncomfortable in a way to drive physically. But yeah, great memories.”