Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies believes that McLaren has lost its “relative performance” and is no longer the “dominant” force since Formula 1‘s summer break.
Following the Dutch Grand Prix back in August, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri led defending champion Max Verstappen by a substantial 104 points in the standings.
Four races later, the Dutchman has taken three wins, two on the trot at Monza and Baku, to now lie 40 points behind the Australian going into the last five races.
With Verstappen dominant in the United States last weekend, Mekies has attributed the Dutchman’s recent resurgence to the Woking-based team losing ground.
“I think it’s saying that in terms of relative performance they [McLaren] don’t have the advantage they had in the first part of the season anymore compared to us,” he told media including Motorsport Week.
The Frenchman surmised that the Milton Keynes-based squad has gained around half a second per lap, in terms of race pace, over McLaren in recent races.
Further, he also strongly believes that the likes of Ferrari and Mercedes are also within range, leaving the fate of the final stage of the campaign open-ended.
“I think we are not in a situation, you know even back in Spa when we won the Sprint we were still a half a second slower than them, every lap, even in Zandvoort after the shutdown, we were still probably half a second slower than them every lap,” he added.
“I think that has now gone, and we are in a situation where you go to a race weekend and you have three or four teams that can fight for the win if they extract everything their car can produce on that track.
“I don’t think anyone is in a dominant position, I think every race, every of the remaining race will be about which one of these four teams is nailing the track layout, the conditions, the temperatures, the tyres and then that guy will win the race.”
The combination that has allowed Red Bull to excel over McLaren
Verstappen’s recent upswing in results has coincided with Red Bull introducing a revised floor and a new front wing, while McLaren’s car has remained unchanged.
Since then, the RB21 has seemed like a more compliant package with a wider working window, allowing the Dutchman to battle the McLaren drivers on pace alone.
When prodded, Mekies refused to ascribe this upturn in performance solely to the floor that was bolted onto Verstappen’s car at the Italian Grand Prix.
Rather, he highlighted how the team’s competitiveness is a “combination” of both aerodynamic and mechanical revisions made to its concept.
“I would certainly not be able to bring [credit] only to one single element such as one upgrade or one set of items,” he explained.
“I think it would be largely minimising the amazing analysis job that has been done to try to identify where were the untapped area of the performance window of the car and the effort to put the car in these areas and to see if it was going to perform.
“It’s not a combination of one factor, it’s a combination of many, many factors. We don’t have a good big incentive to explain to anyone what it is but it’s a combination of all that and of course every hundredth counts.
“The Monza floor helped and every single small detail that we’ve put on the car helps, whether it is mechanically or aerodynamically, and this, together with that extensive exploration of where to run the car, has helped us in the performance.”
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