Max Verstappen can call the 2026 cars “Formula E on steroids” if he likes — Pierre Wache isn’t losing sleep over it.
Red Bull’s technical director was pointedly unmoved when Verstappen’s bruising verdict on the new regulations was put to him in Bahrain. The message was clear: the job isn’t to manufacture good vibes, it’s to deliver a car that wins races. And if that happens, the happiness tends to take care of itself.
Wache’s stance comes after a testing day that looked productive on the timing screens and punishing everywhere else. Verstappen logged a hefty 136 laps at the Bahrain circuit — more than two race distances — and still ended up half a second clear at the top. Yet the driver climbed out talking less about lap time and more about the feel of the machinery, describing the new-generation cars as “not a lot of fun to drive” and “not very F1-like”.
His explanation will have resonated up and down the pit lane: it’s “management” now, with energy management central to extracting performance under the new power unit philosophy, where electrical and combustion power contribute equally. Verstappen didn’t dress it up. He made it sound like the very thing that drew him to Grand Prix racing — driving flat-out — has been rationed.
“I don’t mind that,” he said of the new character, “but, as a pure driver, I enjoy driving flat out, and, at the moment, you cannot drive like that.”
That frustration spilled into something more loaded: Verstappen openly suggested these regulations, set to define the sport for several seasons, could shape whether he sticks around. At this stage of his career, he said, the car needs to be fun — and he’s already “exploring other things outside of Formula 1” for enjoyment.
In any other team environment, comments like that might set off an internal scramble: soothe the star, soften the message, get control of the narrative. Red Bull didn’t do any of that — at least not through Wache.
“Not my goal to make him happy,” Wache said in Bahrain. “It’s making him happy by winning the race.
“My job and the job of the team is to make sure that we give him the tool that he is able to compete at the front.”
It was a very Red Bull response: unsentimental, performance-first, and quietly confident that results will drown out the noise. There’s also a subtext here. Verstappen’s critique is aimed at the direction of the rules, not at Red Bull’s execution of them — and Wache was happy to keep it that way.
He effectively separated the FIA’s regulatory framework from Red Bull’s engineering responsibility, noting that discussions about the regulations and how they shape the feel of the car are “outside of my narrative”. Teams can “participate” in the wider debate, he said, but the focus inside Milton Keynes is simpler: make the car better.
That doesn’t mean Verstappen’s feedback is being dismissed — far from it. Wache was asked whether the world champion can be too honest, and he pushed back hard on the idea.
“From my perspective, and for the team perspective, is you cannot be too honest,” he said. “You have to say what you feel, what you like, improvement… you have to try to understand what it means by saying that.”
In other words: say it out loud, then the engineers can get to work interpreting what’s behind it. Wache framed Verstappen’s bluntness as a tool, not a problem — even if it occasionally lands like a grenade outside the garage.
What makes this dynamic interesting isn’t that a driver complained at testing — that’s practically a winter tradition — but the level of existential weight Verstappen attached to it. When a four-time world champion talks about the sport no longer being “fun” and hints, not subtly, at walking away, it forces everyone to pick a lane. Do you treat it as heat-of-the-moment honesty after a long day, or as a warning shot about the product?
Red Bull, via Wache, is firmly in the first camp: keep the engineering head down, chase the lap time, let the championships do the talking.
And to be fair, there’s an awkward irony in Verstappen’s own Bahrain evidence. He can dislike the sensation and still be quickest. He can complain about the “management” and still reel off 136 laps and top the pile. If Red Bull begins the season at the front, the sport will quickly discover how much discomfort a driver can tolerate when the scoreboard looks good.
If it doesn’t, then Verstappen’s remarks won’t be filed away as candid paddock colour — they’ll become the start of a much bigger conversation about what 2026 is asking drivers to be, and whether the most complete racer of his generation actually wants to play that game for long.
