Why Red Bull has ‘more equations’ to solve despite back-to-back Verstappen wins
Max Verstappen has won in dominant fashion at each of the last two rounds.
Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies has explained the different characteristics of the Marina Bay Circuit in Singapore means the team’s “equations” will “move a bit” to find the optimum setup.
The Singapore Grand Prix has proven to be something of a bogey race for Red Bull in recent years, with the team’s only winning once in the last nine visits to Marina Bay, courtesy of Sergio Perez in 2022.
Red Bull: Singapore has been ‘challenging for the team for many, many years’
Back-to-back victories in dominant fashion by Max Verstappen have reignited faint hopes of the four-time World Champion potentially mounting an unlikely title challenge with the McLaren duo, though he still sits 69 points behind Oscar Piastri at the head of the field.
Both team and driver are keeping focus on a race-by-race basis, though, with much of the Red Bull RB21’s renewed competitiveness attributed to an upgraded floor package introduced at the Italian Grand Prix.
Having visited two low-downforce circuits in Monza and Baku, however, Mekies explained how Singapore represents a completely different challenge in almost every way.
“I think we probably feel that some of the goodness, the good stuff we have seen in Monza, we found here again,” Mekies said after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
“Certainly in the slow speed corners of Baku, there are only slow speed corners here, so it’s very low downforce, but only slow speed corners, and it worked very well for us, which is a different equation to Monza. So, that’s the good news.
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“You go to Singapore, you move a bit your equations. You keep the slow speed corners, but you go to maximum downforce, [where] we have been struggling quite a lot, [in] Budapest, and before Budapest, and also a much hotter track, probably compared to that.
“We know how sensitive not only us, but the whole field, is to the aspect, so we take it step by step.
“We take the challenge of Singapore. It’s a track that’s been challenging for the team for many, many years, and in the context of what we are trying to see, it’s very important to see what suddenly doesn’t work there anymore, or whatever.
“After trying to take it to the next step, you will be back to tracks with medium speed corners, where we were killed by McLaren two races ago in Zandvoort. You know, the gap was very significant.
“Also in Spa, we left Spa thinking that they were half a second faster than us, even though Max won the sprint. So that’s the next sort of set of answer we will be chasing.”
Addressing Red Bull’s success with recent upgrade packages, Mekies was keen to point out that the RB21’s improvement is not down to one single aspect of the car.
While acknowledging the role the update in Monza has played, the team principal explained his belief that the team’s renewed fight with McLaren is a matter of multiple parts of the car coming together.
“We do not think in the team that there is a silver bullet with a single aspect, we really do not think that at all,” he said.
“We think there is a combination of a lot of small details that have extracted more performance out of the car and, of course, a part of that’s the Monza floor, part of that is some of the changes we have made and the extent of that competitiveness again on different setups.
“The honest answer that we don’t know – we are obviously hopeful, but we’ll soon find out.”
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