Red Bull’s ‘quite spectacular’ progress explained as Laurent Mekies maintains’ zero contribution’ stance

Laurent Mekies has hailed the “spectacular” progress made by Red Bull in recent race weekends, but has reiterated his belief he has made “zero” contribution to this.

Red Bull has claimed two second-places and two wins with Max Verstappen in the last four races, somewhat reinvigorating the Dutch driver’s fading world championship hopes.

Laurent Mekies: ‘No silver bullet’ for Red Bull form

Red Bull’s form throughout F1 2025 has been somewhat sporadic, with wins in Japan and Imola proving that the RB21, in the right window, is a race-winning machine.

However, the Milton Keynes-based squad also went through a difficult phase in the middle part of the season in which Verstappen’s championship hopes significantly faded with only one podium finish across seven race weekends.

Some of this was down to on-track misfortunes, such as Kimi Antonelli colliding with a blameless Verstappen in Austria, while a low-downforce gamble backfired at Silverstone when, having taken pole position on Saturday, a wet Sunday meant Verstappen was fighting with a car unsuited to the conditions as he wrestled it home in fifth.

Two days after Silverstone, Red Bull GmbH opted to remove long-time team boss and CEO Christian Horner from his role, and slotted Laurent Mekies – who started the year as team boss at sister squad Racing Bulls – into the positions left vacant by Horner.

While there has been an undeniable uptick in form in the second half of the year, particularly following the summer break, the question remains about what, if anything, has changed.

After all, upgrades introduced to the car in recent race weekends were updates that were overseen and approved by Horner, while Mekies distanced himself in self-effacing fashion from any contribution to Red Bull’s victory at Monza last month.

Verstappen himself has pointed to how a “different philosophy” is aiding Red Bull’s performances of late, and, upon being asked whether the RB21’s full potential wasn’t being unlocked consistently earlier in the season, the four-time F1 World Champion told Motorsport.com that “That’s pretty clear, yes. But there’s nothing we can do about that now.”

Mekies was asked about this theory immediately after Verstappen’s competitive second-place finish in Singapore, a result that closes down the championship gap to 63 points between him and McLaren’s Oscar Piastri.

“Let me put it this way,” Mekies said.

“I think everybody has been working extremely hard in Milton Keynes from race one to now, and never giving up on trying to unlock the potential of that car.”

The upgrades are one facet of this improvement, Mekies said, while declining to address the hypothetical of whether Red Bull had a more competitive car than appeared earlier this year.

“It is fair to say that the progress in the last few weeks has been quite spectacular,” he said.

“And it’s a credit to everyone again back at home, who have never given up.

“It’s a credit to Max, who has been, with this sensitivity, pushing us to explore different avenues. Finally, we found an avenue that unlocked a bit of performance.

“There is no single silver bullet. So there has been a good flow of updates. There have been different ways to run the car.

“And altogether, it seems that we have a competitive package on most tracks, but it’s very difficult to wind back and to say that, with the upgrades at the beginning of the year, where would we be?

“We are not looking back, we are looking forward.”

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Has Laurent Mekies’ contribution to Red Bull’s success changed?

Having been so keen to downplay the importance of his own contribution a few rounds ago, Mekies’ stance was unchanged in this regard despite his increasing comfort at the helm of the team.

“It’s still zero, guys, it’s still zero,” he said when being asked to assess whether the extent of his contribution to the recent success has increased.

“And I say it with the same seriousness as I told you after Monza – the improvement in performance is, very basically, due to the work of everyone trying to analyse the limitations of the car, race after race.

“‘What is stopping us from exploiting the potential of the car? How can we add performance to the car? Where do we need to add performance for it to convert into laptime?’

“That work, again with extremely strong and clear inputs from Max, that work is paying off, which is good news, because, as a group, it just confirms that we have the best people that we can dream of, and we will continue working.

“We’re not stopping there. We’ll stack it again, race by race, and try to see if there is more to come.”

Verstappen himself stopped short of highlighting Mekies as being the catalyst behind the recent upswing in Red Bull’s form, but did say that Mekies is “probably being too nice” in declining any of the responsibility.

“At the end of the day, what is very good is that we just approach it as a proper team effort,” the four-time F1 World Champion said after the Singapore Grand Prix.

“We always tried to look into the details. We tried to understand what our weaknesses were.

“And since a few races, it’s definitely picked up a lot. Maybe now it was not as good as last race weekend, but sometimes you come out of a race just a bit lost, not really understanding why or how.

“I do think that now we understand why or how we can be better. And, yeah, by asking the right questions, including Laurent being involved in that, it’s just working well.”

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