Red Bull Racing’s fall from grace has been spectacular. Following the most dominant year in Formula One history in 2023 when the Milton Keynes outfit won all but one grand prix. The early promise of the RB20 were good in 2024, as Max Verstappen won four of the first five races of the year his only miss was in Australia where his brakes failed whilst leading the race on Sunday.
Max followed this start with a second place in Miami where a late safety car handed Lando Norris the advantage and ultimately his maiden Grand Prix victory. Next time out Max was again top of the pile in Imola before a tricky weekend in Monaco where the car was unable to ride the kerbs efficiently. Vertsappen finished in sixth place.
Two more wins followed in Canada and Spain meaning the Red Bull driver had claimed seven Grand Prix victories in the first ten rounds of the season. But the wheels were to come off in Austria, as Norris and Verstappen were dulling for the lead. Verstappen took the McLaren driver out in turn 3 which forced Lando to retire, whilst Verstappen limped on to finish sixth in a compromised car.
RBR problems arise in 2024
Given such dominance across the first eleven rounds of the year, the Red Bull fall from grace was sudden and dramatic. Verstappen went on a run of ten consecutive Sunday’s where he failed to claim victory, allowing McLaren and Norris to close both him and the team down in both championships.
Whilst the malaise with the RB20 lingered to the end of the year, in a wet Sau Paulo, Max delivered one of the best drives in F1 history. After being compromised in qualifying he started in eighteenth only to carve his way to the front of the field and was twenty seconds clear of his nearest rival come the chequered flag. Another win in Qatar sealed the fate of the drivers’ title, but McLaren went on to win their first constructors’ championship since 1998.
The start of this season was a very different affair from the previous year, with the McLaren’s looking dominant and Max desperately lining to their coat tails. The legacy of the RB20 lived on into this year’s car and after fourteen rounds Verstappen has just two wins and three second places to his name.
Mekies tasked with Red Bull recovery
Although Christian Horner was not sacked due to Red Bull’s fall from grace, the team has been scrabbling to understand their car for quite some time. With Horner gone, new man at the helm Laurent Mekies clearly has his hands full if he’s to return the Milton Keynes based team to winning ways.
Red Bull were under the watchful eyes of Horner for two decades, and he oversaw eight drivers’ titles along with six for the team. Mekies leadership skills will be tested to the extreme as he seeks to turnaround what has been on more than once occasion F1’s dominant force.
The team remain in a strong position, given their second seat has contributed pretty much nothing to their points tally this year. They remain just 42 points behind Mercedes and a further 24 back to Ferrari, despite Verstappen scoring virtually all the points the team has accumulated this season.
2026 driver selection with Marko
Yet big decisions lie ahead for Mekies, chief amongst them will be the driver selection for 2026. Verstappen finally confirmed he would remain with Red Bull Racing for next year, but Tsunoda is almost certainly gone unless he turns things around over the last ten racing weekends of the year.
The second seat at Red Bull has been a revolving door for a number of years, with only non-Red Bull junior driver Sergio Perez surviving alongside Max for four years. Mekies will have the ‘difficult’ decision over Max’s partner for 2026, and will have the ever present Dr. Marko breathing down his neck.
Tsunoda may yet save his place given he has consistently had the older version of the RB21 this year, but has been promised parity after the summer break. Yet Yuki’s F1 tenure is now five seasons old, and he’s shown just flashes of the promise he showed in the junior formula. With Honda set to pattern with Aston Martin, the Japanese key sponsor will have no influence over his future this time around.
Mekies ‘decentralising’ Milton Keynes structures
Having remained loyal to the team for next season, Verstappen will want to see progress from the current state of affairs within the Red Bull team. He’ll need proof in just a few short months time that his decision to ignore a move to Mercedes was justified, or once again the Max leaving Red bull rumours will fire up again as quick as you know it.
Marko has praised Mekies’ early impact, telling Kleine Zeitung that the Frenchman has already introduced positive changes. “He’s been getting to grips with the structures and staff. In the medium term, we’re working towards decentralisation. Each department has its own head — Rob Gray with the RB17 project, Ben Hodgkinson with the engine — allowing Laurent to focus on the race team. He’s simply an excellent technician.”
F1 to cut electrical power in Monaco and Singapore
Marko jab at Horner
The reference is pointed given Mekies predecessor Christian Horner was not an engineer and lacked Laurent’s technical abilities. Yet managing a team of highly motivated people is not about one’s technical expertise, but rather to see the big picture in a highly complex racing organisation with over a thousand employees.
Red Bull’s problem is self evident with 15 places separating their two drivers in the current standings. Even Verstappen has struggled with this year’s machinery whilst Tsunoda looks like a child lost somewhere in a forest of confusion.
Mekies has a tall order ahead of him and despite the restructures he has brought to Milton Keynes, his number one task is to fire up the team’s second driver, whom he gets on with well. Tsunoda for his part must push harder than ever before, whether he can save his F1 future remains to be seen.
Honda admit Verstappen key to the development of their PU
Red Bull Racing will become the first ever F1 customer team to develop its own power unit next year. Having suffered due to Renault’s lack of investment prior to the introduction of the V6 turbo hybrids, the team from Milton Keynes finally hooked up with Honda in 2018. The result – four driver titles and two constructor championships.
Yet Honda’s journey in the modern era was no immediate success. They slogged away as McLaren’s sole supplier having joined the party a year after the rest of the ending manufacturers. The papaya team’s “size zero” car design created numerous headaches for the Japanese engineers resulting in overheating, oil pressure fluctuations and a number of other reliability issues.
Fernando Alonso famously described the Honda power unit as like a “GP2” engine, as Marcus Ericsson in a lowly Sauber cruised past him on lap 6 of the Japanese Grand Prix. The embarrassment for Honda was obvious, given the Spaniards comments came at their first home race since the automaker returned to F1…. READ MORE
With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
