Red Bull explain 'painful' issue that will not be fixed until next F1 season

Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies has confirmed that the clutch problems plaguing the RB22 will not be resolved until next season, after Isack Hadjar called for a redesign following the United States Grand Prix.

Hadjar finished sixth at the Circuit of the Americas, but said after the race that the car's clutch assembly is "fragile" and struggles with operating temperatures, with start issues occurring that were not down to driver error.

Red Bull has endured launch problems throughout this campaign, with Max Verstappen and Hadjar regularly losing ground off the line compared to the frontrunners at Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes.

Speaking about the launch issues, Mekies said the problem touches almost every department at the team.

"The start is a slightly more complex issue to solve," said Mekies, speaking to the media, including RacingNews365.

"The staff performance is going across pretty much all of the departments of the company, probably except aerodynamics. It's the engine, it's the gearbox, it's the clutch, it's many things.

"We have seen from the beginning of the season that we are not the benchmark in terms of launch performance. As much as we have reduced the gap to the competition, and you may remember how bad our starts were at the beginning of the year, we are still not the benchmark.

"The fact that the car in the meantime has improved a lot and is fighting closer to the front makes that deficit even more painful now because the competition around us is very strong.

"So, on one side, I'm confident that we will continue to reduce the gap to the competition from now to the end of the year because every race we learn, and every race we come up with small ways to close the gap.

"On the other side, I equally know that we will not be the benchmark before the end of the season, that it will require some significant design and hardware changes, and that this is something that we will only see next year."

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Mekies - 'Truth in what Isack is saying'

Red Bull's weekend in Austin was also compromised by a separate problem: recurring radio dropouts that left Max Verstappen and Hadjar without pit instructions on occasion.

It marked the second consecutive race in which Red Bull's radio system had failed its drivers mid-session.

Mekies conceded that Hadjar's frustration, in particular, over the communication failures was justified.

"There is some truth in what Isack is saying, meaning we are all frustrated to struggle for the second race in a row with the radio issues," said Mekies. "It's making everyone's lives very difficult.

"It is true that it's something that we would like to fix quite quickly because it's an item that should be working without using too much of our energy, so he's right on that one.

"And if we understood it, we would have solved it, but we don't fully understand why we are being hit by these issues.

"I have to admit that the competition is doing a better job than us because we can obviously hear everyone's radio, and we have been struggling more than we would have liked to."