It seems Christian Horner is again to be made the scapegoat for Red Bull’s lack of performance this year and last. Having been sacked from the Red Bull Formula One team Laurent Mekies was brought in as a replacement for the longest standing F1 team boss.
Red Bull are suffering their worst season since 2015 when their ‘put-put’ Renault engine repeatedly failed to make the 300km distance on Sundays. Yet the power unit has not been the problem at Red Bull but the car design which has been extremely difficult to drive.
Seemingly only Max Verstappen can cope with the RB21 given he has scored 230 of the teams tally of 239 this season so far. The race weekend in Monza kind of proved this again, as Verstappen was dominant finishing almost 20 second ahead of the supreme McLaren’s. Meanwhile Yuki Tsunoda trailed home for a couple of points in a distant ninth position.
Red Bull dominance Shocking
Yet Verstappen’s performance was a shock to the F1 paddock, not only was he the quickest on Saturday but watching him drive off into the distance on Sunday, leaving the best cars this season in his wake was somewhat of a ‘pinch me moment.’
Mekies has been in situ for around eight weeks, but with the August shut down coming two races into his tenure, the impact he can have had on the development of the car is minimal. The new floor in Monza would have been a six week long project from concept to creation and its inception would have been around the time of Christian Horner’s departure.
Yet Verstappen’s shock dominance in Monza has the paddock chatter crediting Mekies with with a turnaround of Red Bull’s fortunes and Max Verstappen only stocked those rumours with his comments after the race. Whilst not relating to the design of the RB21 car, Verstappen claimed Mekies has brought more of a methodical approach to the race team’s weekends.
Max credits Mekies with changes
The world champion believes this impact has been seen clearly over the last two race weekends in Zandvoort and Monza. “Up until now we’ve had a lot of races where we were just shooting left and right a little bit with the set-up of the car,” said Max. “Quite extreme changes, which shows that we were not in control. We were not fully understanding what to do.
“With Laurent having an engineering background, he’s asking the right questions to the engineers – common-sense questions – so I think that works really well. Plus, you try to understand from the things that you have tried, then at one point something gives you a bit of an idea of a direction, and that’s what we kept on working on.”
Verstappen says he first experienced the Mekies boost at his home Grand Prix in the Netherlands. “I definitely felt that in Zandvoort already we took a step that seemed to work quite well, and then here another step which felt again a little bit better.”
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Tsunoda still struggles with the RB21
Both Yuki Tsunoda and Liam Lawson have found the RB21 impossible to drive successfully, complaining the car is regularly on a knife edge in terms of balance. “Before, it felt like you were a passenger in the car,” added Verstappen. “We had some races where it was just not balanced. Now, finally, there was more balance in the car and then the tyres also behaved a little bit more normally.”
Verstappen cruised away from the McLaren drivers in Italy and was quicker the entire race bar the final few laps on his very used medium compound tyres. “Once I got back in the lead I just tried to focus on my own pace and it kept on going well. I would say only the last maybe six to eight laps of that stint I started to struggle a little bit on the medium [tyre].
“Up until that point, it was nice for once. The car was doing a little bit more what I liked. It seems like this weekend has been another step forward with the behaviour of the car and that also then shows in the race. So that was a big positive for us.”
Radical difference to last year
Verstappen questioned whether the RB21 would deliver the kind of dominance at the remaining circuits of the season given the specific nature of the layout at the Temple of Speed. “I think it’s still a bit track dependent,” said Verstappen. “Here you drive with low downforce. It always seems like our car is a little bit more competitive when it’s low-to-medium downforce.
“So it’s not like suddenly now we are back. It’s not like we can fight, I think, every single weekend. But the positive is that we seem to understand a little bit more what we need to do with the car to be more competitive. So I hope that that carries on into the coming rounds as well, and some tracks will be a bit better than others.”
Yet the Red Bull was not good in Monza last season, with Verstappen finishing some 38 second behind winner Charles Leclerc. This year’s RB21 is a development of the 2024 car and so its characteristics largely remain the same. Yet the Italian Grand Prix was a triumph for Red Bull at a circuit where McLaren were expected to continue their domination.
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Its more likely the improvement in performance is from the team’s improved aerodynamic package, despite Max Verstappen playing down its influence. The floors currently are critical and deliver about 50% of the entire downforce on the cars and with Max choosing the skinniest off rear wings, the impact from the floor would have been even greater.
With a number of disgruntled employees expressing their concerns for the future following the sacking of Horner who led the team for twenty years, Verstappen’s praise of Mekies involvement in the current turnaround will go some way to pacify their concerns.
Should Red Bull and Verstappen now challenge McLaren repeatedly, the narrative in the F1 media will increasingly report its due to the ‘Mekies effect.’
Wolff’s first public criticism of Antonelli
Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s baptism into Formula 1 was always going to be brutal, but two chaotic weekends — first in Zandvoort, then at his home race in Monza — have intensified scrutiny on Mercedes’ bold gamble to fast-track him into Lewis Hamilton’s old seat.
Hamilton’s shock departure last winter, after refusing Toto Wolff’s infamous “one-plus-one” contract and being denied a ten-year ambassador role, opened the door for Antonelli’s promotion. The 18-year-old Italian had been part of Mercedes’ junior programme since 2018, collecting titles in Italian F4 and Formula Regional Middle East. But his sole season in Formula 2 exposed his inexperience: briefly leading the championship before fading to a distant sixth.
Still, Wolff placed the future of Mercedes in his hands. Early signs looked promising with five points finishes in his first six races, capped by a podium in Canada. But since Imola, baring his podium in Canada, Antonelli has managed just three additional points — a slump that deepened with a disastrous Dutch GP and what Wolff bluntly labelled an “underwhelming” Monza…. READ MORE
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I don’t believe Mike’s has had a chance to make such a striking difference – please give CH credit where it is due! Also, another article says it was MV who suggested a change in direction, against what had been recommended!
Let’s try to stick to factual reporting please