Laurent Mekies provides Red Bull progress update with ‘big picture’ assessment

Laurent Mekies believes his team’s improvement in form is no fluke, with the team now seeing clear evidence that the latest Red Bull upgrade has sparked a genuine turnaround in performance since Miami.

After scoring just 16 points across the opening three races, Red Bull has collected 41 points in the last two events to underline a significant step forward in performance.

Red Bull boss delivers progress update

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With the team having scored a best result of sixth from the first three grands prix, it looked like it could be a long season for Red Bull, but an unexpected break due to the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian races being cancelled allowed for extra time at the factory.

Red Bull introduced seven new upgrade parts for the RB22 at the first race after the break, Miami, before adding a few more minor updates in Montreal.

Of the teams to have improved the most during that break, Red Bull looks to be near the top, having seen Max Verstappen qualify second when F1 returned to action in Miami.

Then the most recent race in Canada saw both drivers score points for the first time this season, and team principal Mekies believes the Montreal events confirmed steps had been made.

“Big picture, I see at the very least we have confirmed the Miami steps,” The Red Bull boss said of the upgrade boost.

“I think we’ve done a bit more on the Miami step in the way that I think we have managed to take another bit of performance away from the top guys.

“Just looking at the at the lap time, it was three tenths in quali, but I think [in the race] we were a bit closer than the half a second deficit that we had in Miami.

“In Miami we finished 40 seconds from the win, so I think we were a bit closer.”

Mekies did though promote caution, suggesting the team could not make sweeping statements for the rest of the season based on one track.

“Now, there is probably no reason to get too excited in a way that you could also have a track layout effect, so tracks that could be forgiving for certain aspects of the car, but I think at the very least, again, we confirmed Miami.

“I think the guys managed to get something more, and if you consider that the competition had another flow of updates this weekend, I think it’s just confirming that we are going in the right direction of the development.”

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The next step for the team is to give both Verstappen and Isack Hadjar more confidence in the driveability of the car with the Dutchman in particular struggling at points in the Canadian weekend.

Mekies said that the team takes “risk” if they believe it will be of benefit to the drivers.

“We don’t do straightforward,” he said. “As soon as we are in situations where we don’t feel Max and Isack are able to push, we take risk.

“That’s what we’ve done last year. That’s what this team has been doing for a number of years. That’s what we’ve done this weekend.

“So, as soon as we are there, we will. We are going to try things. It’s only the beginning of the year. It’s the beginning of this generation of cars.

“We are going to try things with our drivers to unlock something, even if it’s costing us something, and you learn for the quali condition, you learn for the race condition.

“So, a lot of learning this weekend. How far away from the ultimate potential of the car here? Nobody really knows.”

Red Bull is fourth in the Constructors’ Championship on 57 points, 162 points behind the rampant Mercedes team.

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