Red Bull launches review into Max Verstappen's US GP strategy

Laurent Mekies promised the review after Verstappen said his soft-soft-medium plan had not been agreed, as covered in Mekies responds to Verstappen's 'not agreed' claim with clear verdict. The key detail is that the team principal said putting Verstappen on softs for the second stint was "certainly not the baseline option for us".

Hannah Schmitz became head of race strategy this season. She replaced Will Courtenay, who joined Red Bull before its first season in 2005 and is to link up with McLaren in the role of sporting director. Schmitz joined Red Bull in 2009 and stepped up to become Principal Strategy Engineer in 2021.

Before 2026, the job was shared. Courtenay and Schmitz alternated between trackside strategy responsibilities and remote support from the team's operations room at Milton Keynes. When the team advertised for a senior strategist last year, Schmitz wrote that Red Bull wanted someone to "join our strategy team and alternate the travelling role."

The strategy calls reached Verstappen through Tom Hart, who was race engineer for the first time in Austin. Lambiase continued his responsibilities as Red Bull's Head of Racing that weekend. Hart has worked as a performance engineer within the four-time F1 drivers' champion's side of the garage since the start of 2020. As GPblog reported in Verstappen's new right-hand man gets Red Bull backing after Austin baptism of fire, radio problems made his job harder.

There are more changes to come. Red Bull has signed Tom McCullough from Aston Martin as its future head of racing, and he will start work in his new role with Red Bull in early 2027.

Lambiase is due to join McLaren as chief racing officer "no later than 2028", with CEO Zak Brown having hopes that he will arrive in 2027.

Red Bull has not said who decided to go to softs for the second stint, or how that call reached the car. It has also not said who was on the pit wall in Austin and who was in Milton Keynes.

The review will look at why Verstappen's strategy at the United States Grand Prix led to higher-than-expected tyre degradation. Isack Hadjar's race showed there was another option: after 25 laps on softs, he completed the remaining 31 laps on hards. GPblog looked at the stint data in Verstappen's Austin strategy critique analysed: what the numbers reveal.

Mekies did not blame the strategy for the defeat by Kimi Antonelli, telling reporters that "Kimi was faster." But the review comes at a sensitive time for the department.

In April, former Red Bull mechanic Handkammer said on The Two Mechanics podcast that Schmitz could be next in line to leave the Milton Keynes-based outfit. Red Bull has not confirmed any such move, and she is still in charge of strategy as the team heads to Mexico.