Vasseur 'not sure' Red Bull is F1's best team: Six rounds left, four teams, and a gap under two tenths

At Marina Bay, Max Verstappen held position ahead of Charles Leclerc as the two cars dived into Turn 1. From that moment, the Singapore Grand Prix was effectively settled. Leclerc followed, but following at a gap of two to three seconds means running in turbulent air, heating the tyres faster, and having no DRS to recover the lost time. When Fred Vasseur spoke to the media after the race, he did not say the Scuderia Ferrari car was slower than the Red Bull Racing car. He said Ferrari lost at the starting position. That is the spirit of the argument unfolding in the closing stage of the 2026 Formula 1 season, with only six rounds left. On one side is George Russell, who calls Red Bull Racing “the team to beat”. On the other is Fred Vasseur, who says plainly that he is “not sure” that is true. And between the two statements sits a question the paddock has not answered: this week, who is genuinely fastest? The setting of the 2026 season is a technical gamble. It is the first year of a new rule cycle, with new power units and active aerodynamics. In years that reshape the rules like that, the order of strength rarely stands still. Mercedes-AMG opened with six wins, creating the impression of a dominance. Then Scuderia Ferrari won. Then McLaren won. Then Red Bull Racing won. Four teams, four phases, an order that keeps changing hands. As of the publication of the Motorsport.com report, Red Bull Racing sits fourth, seven points behind third-placed McLaren, with six rounds remaining. Max Verstappen, a four-time world champion, has just won in Malaysia and in Singapore, counting both the sprint and the main race, along with a run of five podiums. The turning point is tied to a large upgrade package brought to Baku. For a team sitting fourth, there is a technical detail rarely mentioned. Under the ATR (Aerodynamic Testing Restriction) mechanism, wind-tunnel and CFD allowances are allocated in reverse order of the previous year’s standings. The lower a team finishes, the more testing it gets. Red Bull Racing, in fourth, sits in the group with a higher allowance than Mercedes-AMG, Scuderia Ferrari and McLaren. This is not an excuse for the results; it is a structural variable explaining why a team that started slowly can catch up late in the season. The first thing to state clearly: the original report supplies not a single lap-time figure. No lap deltas, no sector times, no top speeds, no tyre-degradation curves. Every performance claim rests on results, meaning win counts and podium counts, rather than raw pace. A verdict of the “who is fastest” kind built on that foundation can only carry limited confidence. Based on my experience following races, this is the difference between two kinds of evidence. Results answer the question “who finished first”. Pace answers the question “who could finish first in a different condition”. Only the second kind of evidence separates a genuinely faster car from a car that met the right circumstances. When the second kind is missing, every judgement is fragile. So what are the two sides arguing about? George Russell makes an argument about circuit diversity. Max Verstappen has won at two very different circuit types: a high-speed, low-downforce layout, and a high-downforce street circuit. If the same car wins at both extremes, that signals a genuine car-level step, not the luck of a single race. Fred Vasseur makes the opposite argument, and it too has a basis. At Marina Bay, he said that as soon as you were two or three seconds behind, you started to struggle, even while lapping backmarkers. This is a dirty-air effect combined with the “DRS train”: when a group of cars runs nose-to-tail within a second, none can complete an overtake, and the whole group loses time together. On a tight street circuit, where overtaking is judged extremely difficult, what decides the result is the starting position plus execution at the first corner, not creativity inside the pit window. In other words, the Singapore Grand Prix is a high-variance, low-overtaking event. A win there is weak data for concluding anything about car pace. And that is precisely the point Fred Vasseur wants to press. But there is one point both sides avoid: budget. A large upgrade package brought to Baku, at around round 17, most likely consumes the bulk of Red Bull Racing’s remaining development headroom under the cost cap. That does not deny the step forward; it raises a question of timing. If no further significant package arrives before the season closes, Red Bull Racing will have to defend its advantage on the foundation it already has, while its rivals still have room to move. And there is another variable, more structural and longer-term. A team’s final position in 2026 will determine that team’s ATR allowance for 2027. For a team sitting fourth like Red Bull Racing, holding its current position means a higher testing allowance than third-placed McLaren in the following season. The final six rounds therefore carry two layers of value: this year’s prize money, and next year’s development advantage. Every remaining point is more expensive than it looks. This creates a self-reinforcing loop. If Red Bull Racing finishes the season fourth, it enters 2027 with more testing time than the team above it, McLaren. That advantage does not show on the timing sheets, but it is present in every week of work at the factory. In a new rule cycle, where car concepts are still being shaped, testing time is the most valuable form of currency there is. One more detail about the report’s own data deserves mention. It counts Max Verstappen’s run of form in two different ways: “the last three races” in one place, “the last two grands prix from pole” in another, and the description lists Malaysia and Singapore, including the sprint. This discrepancy most likely comes from mixing sprint and main-race counts. It does not distort the big picture, but it reminds us that the precision of the “run of form” figure is not established. The tactical machine does not run on emotion; it runs on information, and the information here is missing a layer. On the Scuderia Ferrari side, there is one rare internal data point: Charles Leclerc finished second, Lewis Hamilton sixth, in the same car. This is the only reference point between two teammates in the report, and it favours Leclerc at this event. But a single race is too small a sample to conclude anything at season level. Fred Vasseur, meanwhile, chose the familiar positioning of a team principal: “focused on ourselves, not to think about the others”. That statement both shields his drivers from the pressure of chasing Red Bull Racing and asserts that Scuderia Ferrari’s path lies in its own development department. The counter-intuitive reading here is not about picking a side. It is about recognising that both statements have motives aligned with the interests of the speaker. George Russell, in elevating Red Bull Racing to “the team to beat”, is lowering expectations for Mercedes-AMG after its early-season dominance faded. Fred Vasseur, in denying Red Bull Racing’s status as the number-one contender, is protecting the team most directly threatened in the standings by Red Bull Racing’s surge. Neither statement is a neutral assessment. Both are positioning. What is more notable: the fact that this argument is happening in public, with direct quotes from two team principals, is itself evidence. It shows the paddock has no unified view of the order of strength. When insiders disagree about who is leading, the likely reality is that the order is genuinely compressed. Do not ask who drives well; ask which system the rules are standing behind. And here is the crux on the evidence side: with four teams within under two tenths, a single upgrade, or a single circuit type, is enough to flip the “best team” label. If the gap between four teams sits at that level, what will decide the final order over six rounds is not raw pace but reliability and operational quality. That is a domain the original report does not mention in a single line. An analytical framework only matures after reality refutes it. For me, the lesson named N’Golo Kanté at the 2026 World Cup still holds its full value: I once published a wrong figure for a midfielder’s tackle count in a final, and readers mocked it for a week. Since then, I have not published a statistic that has not passed through five layers of checking. In this case, the missing layer is precisely lap-time data. While it is absent, the most honest course is to state clearly that it is absent. The final six rounds will answer the question the two team principals are competing to define. If Max Verstappen keeps winning at both high-speed and street circuits, George Russell’s thesis is established, and Red Bull Racing is genuinely the new benchmark. If Red Bull Racing’s form shrinks back to its favoured circuit type, Fred Vasseur’s thesis is established, and the title fight remains a game of starting position and timing. What I will track is not who wins the next round, but whether Red Bull Racing brings another upgrade package after Baku, and whether Scuderia Ferrari reproduces its starting-position problem at another street circuit. Players change, grandstands change, but the advantage problem stays exactly where it was.