Mekies Praises Verstappen’s Technical Sensitivity

Laurent Mekies offered little praise for Max Verstappen after Red Bull's 2026 resurgence. The Austrian team director attributed a large part of the credit for the return to victory to the Dutchman's ability to identify the RB22's limitations and guide the car's development: "His contribution is enormous; his technical sensitivity is outstanding, probably without equivalent, and that's why he has that ability to point out what is limiting the performance," Mekies declared after the Singapore Grand Prix.

Red Bull has staged a notable comeback since the season began, after falling far behind Mercedes. Thanks to a series of updates and a significant reliability improvement, Verstappen has strung together consecutive victories in Malaysia and Singapore, including a double in Marina Bay with wins in the Sprint and the main race. A result that confirms the Austrian team is on a good run.

Mekies explained that the development process is based on direct and transparent communication between the driver and the engineers: "We do it in a way in which we are always very direct and transparent with each other and constructive, even if sometimes it comes with emotion. It is an enormous impulse for the chassis development and an enormous impulse for the power unit development; we wish we could provide solutions faster sometimes, but it's part of the game," he added.

The Red Bull director also highlighted the honesty that characterizes the team: "Even on a weekend in which you get two poles and two victories like this one, we remain very honest with each other about the fact that there are still a series of things we would like to see done better, and that is the spirit of this team. With that spirit, we will move forward; we will do a reset and address the next races," he stated.

Despite the resurgence, Mekies preferred to remain cautious. "The fact is that in these last three races we had the pace to win, and we won two of the three; for the first time this season, we had the definitive pace. It is fair to say the three tracks are different enough that the car should be competitive on other types of circuits, and that is what we think, but it is never guaranteed, and you have seen that with many examples this year. It is a fight every weekend to extract everything," he explained.

Mekies also warned that Red Bull has completed its update program for this season, which could change the order of forces if its rivals introduce improvements: "There will be no other substantial update of the car but that doesn't mean we are not going to keep pushing very hard to improve to use every remaining race to learn from this year and for next year, the first objective was victory but the other objective is to take advantage of all the learning, we have put our focus on 2027, we believe there is still an enormous amount of learning in 2026 that we could use in 2027," he concluded.

Red Bull faces the final races of the year with high morale and a promising outlook.