Red Bull Team Principal Laurent Mekies responded positively to George Russell’s claim that Red Bull is now the ‘team to beat’ after two consecutive wins for Max Verstappen.
Verstappen took his first win of the 2026 season in Sepang, and followed it up with victories in both the Sprint and main Grand Prix in Singapore.
George Russell told media after the Marina Bay race that he thinks Red Bull are currently the ‘team to beat’, after most considered Mercedes the top dogs for the majority of the year.
Whilst Mekies didn’t disagree with Russell’s assessment, he was cautious to emphasise that Red Bull has completed it’s major upgrade programme for the year, so other teams could still mix up the order.
“I think what is a fact is that, in these last three races, we had the pace to win, and actually we won two out of the three,” Mekies said.
“So, for the first time this season, in these three races we had the ultimate pace, and it’s fair to say that the three tracks are different enough for one to think that moving to other types of tracks, the car should be competitive.”
Mekies: “We think we can fight for wins”
“Now, it’s never a given, and you have seen this with many, many examples this year. You had the back-to-back wins from McLaren, and then they suffered a bit more after.
“You had some very dominant periods from Mercedes, and after that, been suffering. So, it’s a fight every race weekend to extract everything.
“If we do so, we think we can fight for wins. There is another element, which is that, as it is well-documented, we have completed our update programme for this year, so this pecking order could well very rapidly change if some or many of our competitors bring upgrades.
“Now, don’t get me wrong, it does not mean that we will not continue to push very hard to improve.
“We had said to each other the first win is the target, but the other target is to take all the learning. So, the development programme will not change. We have put our focus to ’27. We think there is still a huge amount of learning in ’26 that we could use in ’27.”
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