Laurent Mekies sees Red Bull in a good moment in Formula 1, but stops short of insisting the team will stay ahead in the upcoming races. After the recent results, the team principal acknowledged that the RB22 has the pace to contend for victories, although the end of the season’s updates program could make it difficult to maintain that performance.
The concern is that rivals still have updates to bring to the tracks. McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari faced difficulties at different points in the season, whether due to a lack of updates or the performance of the introduced parts. Now, a new round of improvements could shift the balance between the teams again.
George Russell had stated that Red Bull is “the one to beat,” and Mekies acknowledged that the recent results give reason for such an assessment.
“The fact is that, in these last three races, we had the pace to win two of the three,” Mekies told the press.
The good moment centers on Max Verstappen as the main highlight. The Dutchman won in Bahrain and Singapore, secured pole position in both events, and also claimed the Sprint in Singapore. In Azerbaijan, he finished second, just 0.196s behind Russell. Across the three rounds, Verstappen accumulated 76 of the 83 points available. As a result, he rose to fourth place in the drivers’ standings and reduced the gap to Russell to 17 points, who sits in second.
Recovery also helped Red Bull in the intra-team battle. The squad is now just seven points behind McLaren, third in the constructors’ standings. In addition to on-track results, a series of updates to the RB22 contributed to the performance improvement. The team’s engine was also singled out as the strongest in the grid.
Mekies believes the car has the potential to stay competitive even on circuits with characteristics different from those recently visited, but he cautions that performance can vary considerably from one race to another: “So, for the first time this season, in these three races, we had the maximum pace, and it’s fair to say that the three tracks are sufficiently different that, moving to other kinds of circuits, the car should be competitive. “That’s also what we believe: that the car should be competitive, having shown what it showed in the last three races.”
The Red Bull boss cited the rivals themselves as examples of how quickly the landscape can change. McLaren had a streak of victories before losing some performance, while Mercedes also experienced periods of domination and then faced more difficulties.
“Now, it’s never guaranteed, and you’ve seen many examples this year,” Mekies said. “You had McLaren’s consecutive wins, and then they suffered a bit more. You had some very dominant periods from Mercedes, and after that, they have been struggling, so it’s a fight every race to get all we can out of it. If we do that, we believe we can fight for the win, and there’s another element.”
“It’s just that, as has been well documented, we have completed our update program for the year, and therefore the balance of power can very well shift quickly if some, or many, of our rivals bring updates.”
