Red Bull verdict on upgrade progress after Max Verstappen’s victory return

SEPANG – Laurent Mekies revealed that Red Bull did not expect to make such a step forward in Malaysia after Max Verstappen scored the team’s first F1 victory of the F1 2026 season.

Verstappen was at his dominant best in the Bahrain Grand Prix, with Red Bull caught somewhat off guard by his pace.

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After battling McLaren and Lando Norris for the title down to the final race of last season, Red Bull started the new campaign on the back foot.

But especially on Verstappen’s side of the garage, results have steadily improved, with the Dutchman having featured on the podium in seven of the last nine races – a streak matched only by championship leader Kimi Antonelli.

Red Bull introduced what is expected to be its final major package of the season in Azerbaijan, where Verstappen missed out on victory by just 0.196 seconds.

Asked by PlanetF1 how Red Bull has been able to progress through the order this season, Mekies said: “What it is fair to say is that certainly, in the first part of this regulation cycle, as opposed to the end of the regulation cycle last year, there are more gains for everyone.

“So, we all get bigger gains through the seasons, as we all had anticipated.

“Nonetheless, that applies to everyone. So what it means is that getting those relative performance steps compared to competition is as difficult as it was before.

“What I take from the Baku upgrade is not so much what it unlocks or what it doesn’t unlock.

“I don’t think there was anything too specific about that upgrade compared to our previous ones.”

Red Bull has a history of developing a car throughout a season, with this ability speeding Verstappen’s title tilt in 2025.

“What I take from that one is that once again this team has been able to produce an incredible season development, and of course, we started on the back foot,” Mekies added.

“But equally, nobody was going to wait for us, and starting from that more than one second back and being where we are now, I think it’s very much a Red Bull Racing trademark to have this strong in-season development.

“At some stage, we felt there would be a possibility that we could get stuck into that three-tenths mark compared to the best cars, and in the end, the guys have been doing an amazing job on the chassis side, PU side, to eat up those last three tenths, which we felt would be the most difficult.

“Of course, the Baku upgrade played a role with that, but it’s part of a more global effort from everyone again, chassis side, PU side, to extract more.

“We have our feet on the ground.

“Our competition will react; they will have more upgrades, and we have seen big variation in pecking order track to track.”

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Verstappen had left his decision on whether to remain with Red Bull for 2028 until late in the day, and although results had started to pick up, there remained a significant gap to the pace-setters when he did eventually re-sign.

Asked if talks about the Baku upgrade specifically had played a part in making up the four-time champion’s mind, Mekies said: “The short answer is no.

“We were not waiting for a magic upgrade that was supposed to come and bring us the performance.

“We knew we had upgrades. We knew actually that Baku would be the last one. It was continuing the trend of the development of the car.”

He added: “Yes, this is the sort of discussions we had with Max, not about the Baku package or any other package, but about the underlying work happening in Pierre’s [Wache] team and in Ben’s [Hodgkinson] teams, and where we felt there were lap time opportunities and long-term opportunities, but nothing specific to the Baku package.”

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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