Verstappen Lauds New Boss After Shock Monza Victory

Max Verstappen and Helmut Marko attribute Red Bull’s surprising dominant victory at the Italian Grand Prix to a change in the car’s setup approach under the direction of new boss Laurent Mekies. Verstappen achieved pole position and won in Monza with ease, surpassing the usually unreachable McLarens by almost 20 seconds, the largest margin of victory a driver has had this season. This was Red Bull’s first victory in a Grand Prix that did not occur under the leadership of Christian Horner, who was replaced as team principal by former engineer Mekies at the end of July. The result, and Verstappen’s podium finish at the Dutch Grand Prix a week earlier, represented a significant shift in the team’s form after the summer break. Verstappen has spoken openly in the last 18 months about Red Bull’s volatile car, which was previously a winning car in 2022 and 2023. The four-time world champion stated that the team is approaching each weekend with a clearer focus on how to extract maximum performance.

So far, we’ve had many races where we’ve been shooting a bit left and right with the car setup. Quite extreme changes, which shows that we didn’t have control. We didn’t fully understand what to do.

Max Verstappen

Verstappen also added that with Laurent’s experience, who has an engineering background, and asking questions to the engineers, the team has achieved a better understanding of the direction to take. Verstappen felt that an important step was already taken in Zandvoort and another one was taken in Monza which turned out even better. Formula 1 cars rarely change fundamentally overnight, deadlines are significant and improvements are always in progress, so any new part that arrives on the Red Bull car now would have been part of a process initiated under Horner’s supervision.

Marko, a long-time Red Bull advisor, acknowledged that the team has not made any major changes to its upgrade plan or the fundamentals of the car. However, he reiterated what Verstappen had said: the team is extracting performance from the car in a better way.

The difference is that the preparation for a weekend is different now. Laurent is an excellent engineer, so now the idea is to take what the simulation shows us, but mix it with the experience that Max has and with the experience that our race engineers have. That’s how we want to make a more predictable and manageable car. Basically, it’s the same product we had before, only some improvements arrived and they are working. But 20 seconds over McLaren, I wouldn’t have predicted that.

Helmut Marko

• Verstappen at the Italian Grand Prix.

Verstappen’s victory was the third of the season and the first since the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in May. Although he was considered a title contender at the beginning of the year, he has now dropped out of the fight for it. Currently, he occupies third place, 96 points behind the championship leader, Oscar Piastri.