Red Bull’s decision to continue developing its current car to understand its weaknesses will benefit the company in 2026 rather than hurt its future chances, according to team boss Laurent Mekies.
The RB21 received further updates at the Mexico City Grand Prix, as Red Bull continues to fight for second place in the Constructors’ Championship and Max Verstappen mounts a late charge in the Drivers’ standings. Although teams have to consider cost caps and many have shifted full focus to their 2026 cars some time ago, Mekies says that by still working on the current car there are benefits for Red Bull in the future.
“As to why we may have developed this car a little bit further than the competition, it has nothing to do with ’26,” Mekies said. “I think if we were to turn the page at the point in the season where we are very dissatisfied with this car and not reaching its full potential, you would go into 2026 with a lot of question marks in your mind and a lot of wishful thinking.
“So we’ve preferred to invest a little more in this car. We’ve tried to unlock what we felt hadn’t worked and get a bit of performance out of it. It gives us a lot more confidence in the tools, methodologies and approaches for 2026. Yes, there is a cost to the amount of time and energy left to do that, but that’s the reasoning behind it. That has nothing to do with performance at all.”
“We do it this way because we think it’s a net gain for us – and the other guys left alone. We validate our approach and [that will help] We wouldn’t do it in 2026 if we thought it would jeopardize this. We know there is a price to pay. We think it is reasonable and we think it is worth it.”
Verstappen opened up a championship lead of less than 36 points at the Mexico City Grand Prix, but was comfortably beaten by Lando Norris in the McLaren. Mekies says the title picture has no influence on the way Red Bull goes about each race weekend.
“We’re not going to change our approach. Five races ago we weren’t looking at the championship. We weren’t looking at the championship before Austin, we weren’t looking at Austin. What we’re looking at is: yeah, we don’t feel 100 percent good about it [Mexico] when it comes to car performance.
“That’s where the focus is going to be now… The focus will be: What would we do if we come back here? What can we learn for Brazil?”
“The rest, the championship status is a consequence. It doesn’t change anything for us, whether we are close or far. We still want, as a team, to constantly extract and leave knowing that we have extracted absolutely everything. And that everything is good enough to fight for the victory. That was not the case [in Mexico]so that’s where the focus is.”
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