Mekies overriding Marko in Red Bull driver decisions – With Toto Wolff withdrawing from his very public courtship of Max Verstappen, the future of the current world champion is set for at least another year. With the biggest technical regulation changes coming in 2026, it was pointless for Max to jump from the Milton Keynes ship until he had some idea of the future pecking order.
There may easily be six top teams in 2026, with Audi entering the sport with decades of top flight motor racing experience in other categories. Aston Martin have completed their mega complex in Silverstone and have Adrian Newey calling the shots.
Yet who will emerge on top is anyone’s guess presently, although based on their dominance at the last major change of power unit regulations, Mercedes are most people’s favourite choice to come out top of the pile.
Marko high praise for academy driver
With Verstappen’s services safely secured for at least another year, Red Bull now face the perennial dilemma over who should partner him in the all new RB22. Yuki Tsuoda has had a terrible time since being promoted alongside the world champion and as Verstappen’s team mate has scored fewer points than all before him.
The Japanese driver’s F1 career looked to be over in the autumn of this season despite breaking his seven race streak of no points in Zandvoort. At the time Dr. Helmut Marko was talking up his academy driver Arvid Landblad who was in contention for the F2 championship.
Given any opportunity, Dr. Helmut Marko was up for talking about his rising star Lindblad, who despite being under age was granted special permission by the FIA to gain his super license. This gave him the opportunity at the British Grand Prix to take the RB21 for a run in FP1 where he completed twenty two laps and was fourthteenth in the time sheets, just 4/10ths slower than Max Verstappen.
In his Speedweek column the following week, Marko heaped praise on the young driver. “His speed was right, his statements were profound, and the technicians are very happy with his performance,” wrote the Austrian. The Red Bull advisor went on to praise his Lindblad for his performance in a TPC (testing in previous cars) outing where he completed more than a 100 laps at Silverstone “showing excellent physical condition and competitive lap times,”
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Mekies deferred to Marko over driver decisions
When asked in Zandvoort about Red Bull’s driver lineup for 2026, newly appointed Red Bull team boss responded “ask Helmut.” This appeared to be the fulfilment of Red Bull’s newly streamlined team principal role which wold not be as broad as when the team was managed under Christian Horner.
Marko was repeatedly critical of Yuki Tsunoda’s efforts alongside Verstappen and appeared to imply at times the Japanese driver was coming to the end of his F1 road. In Monza, Yuki and Liam Lawson had a coming together which was later described by Dr. Marko as “incredibly stupid” as he laid into the Japanese driver.
At the time it sounded like the mood music in Milton Keynes was that Tsunoda would be leaving the Red Bull group at the end of the season. Mekies was deferring to Marko, who repeatedly made his views plain.
Yet there’s been a shift in the force over the past few race weekends, with Mekies looking more assertive in terms of assessing the current driver lineup’s performances. Dr. Marko declared there wold be an announcement after the race in Mexico City as to who wold be driving for the two teams in 2026, but Mekies contradicted the Red Bull advisor stating “there’s no rush” and the team will take its time.
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Red Bull boss defends Tsunoda
Further, Laurent Mekies heaped praise on his Japanese driver after the Grand Prix in Mexico, “I think Yuki had his best weekend in a long time,” said the Red Bull team boss. “We have said that a few times, but it is true. He was very, very close in Quali to Max [Verstappen]. I think it was two-tenths in Q2. Today, the first stint was very, very strong as well, two-tenths, three-tenths to Max, on the same very long first stint on the medium [tyre].”
Despite crashing out of qualifying in Q1 in Las Vegas and trailing home outside the points once again, Mekies jumped to the defence of his Japanese driver when Channel 4 presenter suggested Yuki had “thrown in the towel.”
The Red Bull boss refused to lay the blame for another pointless weekend on Tsunoda instead suggesting the engineers were at fault, particularly on Saturday. “You know, the truth is with Yuki is that we’ve lost it yesterday. We said it, we got it wrong in qualifying, and when you are going to start from the pit lane, it’s always going to be difficult.
“So, that’s what it is. Yes, it cost us some points, but we don’t judge it on today’s race, we judge it on the pace that we can extract.” Mekies revealed the team had incorrectly set the tyre pressures on the Japanese driver’s car, which made it impossible for him to make it into Q2.
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Marko’s views being ignored
Dr. Marko failed to give his usual testy assessment of Tsunoda’s efforts in Las Vegas and Juan Pablo Montoya believes his view of the Japanese driver are being over ridden. When asked about Yuki’s chances of remaining within the Red Bull F1 family for 2026, he replied: “I think there is a small chance because of politics and I don’t want to talk about it here.”
“But it’s not so black and white because if I put it to you like this: if Helmut made the decisions, I would say that 90 per cent he would be out.” Laurent Mekies was an admirer of Tsunoda when he became team principal of the Racing Bulls and is believed to have been instrumental in persuading Christian Horner to replace Liam Lawson with the Japanese driver earlier this season.
In fact it appears that Dr. Marko was instrumental in Liam Lawson being promoted this year ahead of Tsunoda given his assessment following the announcement of the 2025 Red Bull driver lineup. “In terms of speed, Tsunoda is definitely the faster of the two at the moment,” admitted Marko. “But he doesn’t have the necessary consistency and keeps making mistakes.”
Yet two Grand Prix later, it was Tsunoda who was racing alongside Verstappen, despite Marko’s December assessment which concluded: “We believe it would cause great emotional difficulties for Tsunoda to realise alongside Max that he cannot beat him, possibly not even come close, and that things are not going as he had imagined.”
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Marko’s influence diminished
There are rumours that Dr. Marko’s influence is much reduced in the new regime at the Red Bull company in Austria. He has failed to deliver a top class driver to race for the senior team since Max Verstappen – and even then Max did not come through Marko’s academy programme.
Dr. Marko was also forced to admit his opinion of Nyck de Vries was wrong. He was asked on the inside Line podcast whether he and Horner regularly disagreed over driver selection, his response was telling: “Not often, but sometimes we do. The last one… I would say de Vries. Basically it’s AlphaTauri, but we’re a big family and we get opinions. He [Horner] was not a fan of De Vries. I would say at the moment it looks like he was right.”
De Vries was dropped three race weekends later.
Lindblad’s hopes for 2026 fade
The other factor in Laurent Mekies decision making is the fact that Arvid Lindblad’s F2 challenge has fallen off a cliff during the autumn. He lies a distant seventh in the championship and looks anything like ready for F1.
No other team is blooding a rookie with the massive technical rule changes coming in 2026 given its difficult enough making the leap from a junior category, without the new challenge of energy management which will be crucial next year.
So it appears Tsunoda’s skin may be saved by the Red Bull internal politics, although Isack Hadjar is favourite to replace him alongside Verstappen. Whilst not ideal for the Japanese driver to drop back down the Racing Bulls, it will give him one further season to demonstrate to those outside the Red Bull circle, he deserves a driver elsewhere as did Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon.
Marko mocks McLaren over Las Vegas
Max Verstappen’s performance in Las Vegas was described by his team boss as a “masterclass.” He out psyched Lando Norris on the way to the grid by hanging back some distance from the McLaren driver, who complained about this tactic over team radio to his engineer Will Joseph.
Such was the level of distraction caused by the world champion that Norris failed to deliver the extra burnouts completed by the rest of the field which left his tyres colder than his rival who made a better start when the lights went out.
Dr. Helmut Marko, special advisor to the Red Bull teams believed his driver had owned the race weekend and found a number of the McLaren team radio messages so far fetched they were hilarious…. READ MORE
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Wrong, Mekies definitely doesn’t override Marko in the overall driver choices, especially since he has even less control than Horner had, not to mention Oliver Mintzlaff is still in the upper management.
Additionally, the team should just accept that Tsunoda’s performance level is all on him in the end & the same for Yuki himself, so the Q1 elimination in Las Vegas was definitely on him as the track conditions were the same for everyone & everyone had the same amount of running time to start flying laps, & I’m positive not every single other team got their tyre pressures perfect either, yet no one driver eliminated in Q1 claimed that the elimination wasn’t in their control, not even Hamilton, so they should just accept reality that repetetively subpar performance level is always predominantly on driver rather than external factors.
All in all, VER-HAD & LAW-LIN are still the most likely 2026 lineups, followed by both lineups remaining unchanged, which would ultimately benefit both teams heading into F1’s biggest ever technical regulation overhaul, nor does any necessity even exist to rush with either Hadjar or Lindblad to begin with, not to mention, staying put at VCARB & F2, respectively, would be beneficial for both career-wise, & Tsunoda’s continuation in the Red Bull organization would be beneficial for him & the organization as a whole only by staying put at Red Bull Racing, given his career situation, which means that returning to the B-team wouldn’t benefit either party at all in any way anymore after having driven there for a little over four seasons before promotion, & no justification exists for Tsunoda to deserve another chance like Gasly or Albon & even the latter’s such case was questionable.’
Long story short, unless Red Bull is willing to oust Tsunoda altogether, given all the justification for such a decision, they should just keep both lineups unchanged rather than change anyone for the sake of changing, nor would Tsunoda even stand a chance for re-promotion, considering the GP amount he’ll have done in the main team once this season is over, which is more than Gasly before his demotion & almost as many as Albon before losing his drive after the 2020 season & he wasn’t even placed back into the B-team despite his career situation at the time, which would’ve fully justified deciding so, unlike in Tsunoda’s present career situation in comparison.
Besides, Red Bull wouldn’t even benefit from still keeping Tsunoda financially anymore either, given the upcoming Honda PU supply end, while staying put at Red Bull Racing would at least benefit them in some other ways, such as provide full driver continuity heading into the upcoming technical regulation changes.