Laravel Missing required parameters for Route:

We are getting a weird error and I've looked at our Git history and no one has touched this controller and routes belonging to them in several months.

We have a form that takes the GET Request data from a page and passes them from Step 1 to Step 2. So the variables are inserted into the URL such as /refer/step_2?name='john'&phone="9999999999" etc.

Error:

Missing required parameters for [Route: step_2] [URI: refer/step/2].

Step 2 (Post Request):

/**
 * Validates data from step and moves on to step 2.
 *
 * @param Request $request
 */
public function step1_request(Request $request) {
    // Remove any additional characters from the lead phone number.
    $request['phone'] = preg_replace('/\D+/', '', $request->phone);
    $request->merge(['phone' => $request['phone']]);

    $validate = [
        'name' => 'required',
        'phone' => 'required|digits:10'
    ];

    $validationErrorMessages = [
        'phone.digits' => 'The phone number must be 10 digits. No spacing, dashes, or special characters.'
    ];

    $validateData = $request->validate($validate, $validationErrorMessages);

    //dd returns fine here.. includes the request data.
    return redirect()->route('step_2', $request); // <- Error happens here. Missing required parameters for [Route: step_2] 
}

Step 2 (blade)

/**
 * Returns a view to confirm the output from step 1.
 *
 * @param Request $request
 * @return \Illuminate\Contracts\View\Factory|\Illuminate\View\View
 */
public function step_2(Request $request) {
    .....
}

Routes:

Route::prefix('refer')->group(function () {
    // Step 1
    Route::get('/', ['uses' => 'ReferController@step_1', 'as' => 'step_1']);
    Route::post('/', ['uses' => 'ReferController@step1_request']);
    // Step 2
    Route::get('step/2', ['uses' => 'ReferController@step_2', 'as' => 'step_2']);
    Route::post('/step/2', ['uses' => 'ReferController@step2_request']);
    // Step 3 
    Route::get('step/3', ['uses' => 'ReferController@step3', 'as' => 'step_3']);
    Route::post('step/3', ['uses' => 'ReferController@step3_request']);
});

via Chebli Mohamed