Laurent Mekies explains Red Bull’s recent step forward following Monza data claims

Laurent Mekies believes Red Bull is in a better place now than a few races ago, having carried out setup experiments across recent Grand Prix weekends.

Red Bull won its first race since Imola last time out at Monza, with Helmut Marko saying the team’s engineers are taking on board the input from Max Verstappen after practice, rather than blindly relying on the data from simulations.

What was claimed after Monza?

Max Verstappen won the Italian Grand Prix by 19 seconds, returning the Milton Keynes-based squad to the top step of the podium for the first time since the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at the start of summer, and for the first time under new team boss Laurent Mekies.

While the French engineer, promoted into Christian Horner’s roles following the decision by the parent company to axe its former leader, declared his contribution to the Monza win as being “zero”, both Marko and Verstappen mentioned Mekies post-race, with Verstappen saying he has been asking all the right questions of the Red Bull engineers.

“Up until now, we’ve had a lot of races where we were just shooting left and right a little bit with the setup of the car,” he said.

“Quite extreme changes, which show that we were not in control. We were not fully understanding what to do.

“With Laurent having an engineering background, he’s asking the right questions to the engineers – common-sense questions – so I think that works really well.

“Plus, you try to understand from the things that you have tried, that at one point, some things give you a bit of an idea of a direction, and that’s what we kept on working on.

“I definitely felt that in Zandvoort, we already took a step that seemed to work quite well, and then here another step which felt again a little bit better.”

As for Marko, who said Mekies is an “excellent engineer”, the Austrian explained, “The engineers are listening more to the driver.

“If you have such a fast and experienced driver, I think that’s the right way.

“He has to drive it, and it was important that our top speed is improving, which we saw we could go away or drive away from the McLarens. And also some other changes, the driver’s input was recognised.

“The whole technical team is more open to discussing things, and they are not blindly taking what the simulation says.”

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Laurent Mekies reveals the ‘biggest effect’ on Monza pace

Verstappen’s win at Monza was a very different picture from the difficult weekend the team had in 2024, as Verstappen could only manage a distant sixth place.

A large part of this improvement, Mekies explained in Baku, was down to a Monza-specific package prepared by Red Bull for the idiosyncratic venue this year. The team introduced a revised floor body, floor fences, floor edge, and shorter chord front wing flaps.

It’s worth remembering that such packages can take months to research, prepare, and produce, meaning Mekies was again hinting that the improvement is not down to any decisions he’s yet made for the team.

“There is obviously the Monza specificity in terms of downforce level that you run there, and the fact that the team had brought a much-improved Monza package compared to the situation last year,” he said.

“So that’s the biggest effect.”

Where Mekies has been able to have some influence is on setup direction, with the Frenchman boasting a strong engineering background through years at Toro Rosso/Racing Bulls.

“In terms of direction of setup, it is fair to say that we have been experimenting quite hard in the last few races,” Mekies said on Sky F1 after FP3 in Baku.

“It’s not only Monza. It’s Zandvoort, Budapest, sometimes it goes in the right direction and sometimes it doesn’t go in the right direction.

“But, here, it’s a little bit of a test for us to see how much of the good pace we had in Monza is going to be carried to the next races.

“We are probably in a better place than we were three, four, or five races ago. But there is still some work to do.”

Certainly, the first practice sessions in Azerbaijan have suggested that Red Bull is in the mix once again, at least in Verstappen’s hands.

The Dutch driver finished in second place in final practice, 0.222 off the pace set by McLaren’s Lando Norris, and Mekies said the “impressive levels of wind” have made things tricky.

“You always learn things, especially here on the track, where you get to some corners where you have the protection from the grandstand, and you get to the next corner where you have no protection, and you get the full effect of the wind,” he said.

“So it’s interesting to see how the guys are dealing with it. But look, I don’t think it changed fundamentally what we saw yesterday. McLaren is very, very fast. Ferrari is very fast as well. We try to get with these two teams.

“Probably what you see on the timing screens with us trailing by two tenths is probably about fair of where we are as per the end of FP3.”

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