Laurent Mekies is relieved that Red Bull didn’t perform as badly in Zandvoort as it did in Hungary, but he’s still not satisfied with being second best
Red Bull can breathe a sigh of relief after the Formula 1 race in Zandvoort. At least the scenario from Budapest did not repeat itself. There, the team was not competitive in any way and achieved one of its worst results in recent years.
Even world champion Max Verstappen was unable to make an impact and finished ninth in the end – behind both Aston Martins, a Racing Bull and a Sauber. But in Zandvoort, the Dutchman was back in the fight for the podium and took second place after Lando Norris retired.
“At least it shows that Budapest was a blip,” says team boss Laurent Mekies, reassured. That was also the hope immediately after the race in Hungary, but Red Bull was confident at the time that they would get the problems sorted out. “And it turns out that was the case,” Mekies praised.
“That’s quite interesting because the characteristics here are quite similar to those in Budapest.” But while they couldn’t get the tires to work back then, that didn’t seem to be such a big problem at Zandvoort.
As a result, Red Bull was second only to McLaren. “But that’s not something we’re happy with,” emphasizes Mekies, “because the gap to McLaren was still painful in the race.”
Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff even went so far as to say that McLaren’s pace was “humiliating” for everyone else. “If they wanted to push, they could do so and immediately pull away. We’re not kidding ourselves about that,” Mekies agrees, but tries to see it positively from Red Bull’s perspective.
“Unlike in Budapest, we were able to keep up with Mercedes here on this track, we were able to keep up with Ferrari. That’s encouraging,” he says.
“Are we happy? No. Because we struggled quite a bit to get the car into the right window between Friday morning and qualifying on Saturday,” the Frenchman continues, hoping that the team will learn more as the season progresses.
“The last nine races are not so much about the positions in the championship, but about using everything we can to further develop our understanding—especially with a project that is suboptimal compared to what we had hoped for.”
