Damaged, defeated and cast aside on the turn three run off, Max Verstappen's RB21 ended a weekend of disappointment with an early retirement from the Austrian Grand Prix.
Collected by Kimi Antonelli's locked-up Mercedes, the world champion was an innocent bystander into the tight, uphill hairpin that so often causes crashes and controversy.
But what is most consequential is not the retirement itself. Verstappen did not envisage battling the two McLarens on pure pace.
For a team that won every race bar one in 2023, to now dropping to a comfortable fourth in the constructors' championship, that is a worrying decline.
Like every great champion, Verstappen demands the very best from his team. The sort of standards that have been established between the Dutchman and Red Bull is what allowed them to make their profound mark on this sport in recent years.
But those same standards, not due to a lack of trying, have not prevented this stark regression. Red Bull have won two races in 2025, but without Verstappen, things would look incomprehensibly ugly.
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And the Austrian Grand Prix proved it
The world champion's first lap retirement meant that Red Bull's race hinged on the success of Yuki Tsunoda. However, after a Q1 elimination, a collision with Franco Colapinto and an absence of competitive pace, he finished last of the finishers.
And there is the currently reality: in the hands of Verstappen, Red Bull have a chance of victories. But without him, they are not only anonymous, but can barely fight for points.
The complexities and the narrow operating window of the current generation of Red Bull cars is something that their number one driver can tackle, but his slew of teammates seemingly can't.
Their insensitivities can extinguish the confidence of perfectly capable drivers, but not a generationally-defining driver like Verstappen. Though it is clear that the performance has certainly thwarted both.
Dating back to Pierre Gasly, in 2019, whoever Red Bull place in their second seat, a chasm between themselves and the world champion continues. Some teammates got closer than others (Sergio Perez won five grand prix at the team), but close intra-Red Bull battles were incredibly rare, and were scarcely down to ultimate pace.
In fact, the year in which Sergio Perez finished second in the drivers' championship (2023), Verstappen still had more than double his teammate's points tally. Therefore, the enormous gaps have always existed but Red Bull's dominance, at the end of 2022 and throughout 2023, masked this.
But now, with the RB21 slipping down the order, the second car is growing a greater risk of qualifying in a lowly position, as Tsunoda learned last weekend.
He was only two tenths of a second slower than his teammate, in Q1. Such a deficit to Verstappen, at the same track but last season, would have placed him on the front row.
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There appears to be no way out
With the relentless execution of Verstappen, coupled with his startling speed, it is inevitable that the team revolves around him. That is not a criticism of the Dutchman's success, it is simply natural for a team to give everything to a driver who represents their best chance of winning championships.
However, genuine questions must be asked of whether Red Bull are doing enough to support their second drivers and are valuing their feedback enough.
In 2024, former Red Bull driver Sergio Perez revealed to The Race that some personnel had apologised to him for not valuing his feedback.
And on Sunday, speaking to F1 TV, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, said: "it's a car [the RB21] that's evolved over the years around the development path that we've taken. It isn't an easy car to drive, but it's not that difficult either."
But if that is the case why is Tsunoda still at Red Bull, given that he has now gone four races without scoring a point? If it is the fault of the second driver, then why is it so similar to the struggles of Liam Lawson, during 2025's first two races?
Are Red Bull's pool of drivers that underwhelming. Again, if that is the issue, then why are they not looking outside of their driver programme?
The last few races have been a particularly sobering time for the Milton Keynes-based team. The new technical directive, issued for the Spanish Grand Prix, hardly brought them closer to pace-setters McLaren when they hoped it would revive their championship chances.
Now, a month later, with the threat of their difference-maker departing, Red Bull appear lost. And, barring a miracle, hopes of an imminent championship are falling rapidly.
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