SINGAPORE – Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies persists in his refusal to take credit for the remarkable improvement in the team’s performance under his direction, something Max Verstappen considers to be “too kind” of him.
Since Mekies took office in July, Red Bull’s performance has undergone a drastic change.
Verstappen achieved a podium finish at the Dutch Grand Prix after the summer break, followed by consecutive victories in Monza and Baku, before securing second position at Sunday’s Singapore Grand Prix.
After Verstappen’s victory in Monza in September, Mekies deflected questions about his impact since taking office. Three races later, his opinion hasn’t changed.
“It’s still zero, guys. It’s still zero,” he told reporters on Sunday night when asked if he would reconsider how much credit he can take now. “And I say that with the same seriousness as I told you after Monza.”
Laurent Mekies
The improvement in performance is fundamentally due to the work of everyone, trying to analyze the limitations of the car, race after race. What prevents us from exploiting the car’s potential? How can we add performance to the car? Where do we need to add performance to turn it into lap time?
And that work, again, with extremely strong and clear contributions from Max, that work is bearing fruit, which is good news. Because as a group, it simply confirms that we have the best people we could dream of. And we will continue working, we will not stop there.
We’ll take it again race by race and try to see if there’s more to come.
This change has led McLaren to label Verstappen as a real threat to Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris in the fight for the drivers’ title. The current champion is 63 points behind the leader with six races remaining.
Verstappen has already praised Mekies for the work he has done since taking over his former position as head of Red Bull’s junior team, Racing Bulls.
Mekies comes from an engineering background, and Verstappen said after the Italian Grand Prix that he had injected a more sensible approach to how they set up the car.
“I think Laurent is probably too nice in that sense,” Verstappen said on Sunday night when he was asked about Mekies’ comments.
“But at the end of the day, what’s very good is that we approached it as a proper team effort. We always try to analyze the details. We try to understand what our weaknesses were. And for a few races now, it has definitely improved a lot.”
“Maybe it wasn’t as good as the previous race weekend, but sometimes you come out of a race a bit lost, not really understanding why or how. I think we now understand why or how we can improve.”
“And, yes, by asking the right questions, including Laurent involved in that, it’s simply working well.”
