New Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies has revealed he will encourage the team to take the “bold decisions” that will be required to restore it to the pinnacle of Formula 1.
Red Bull has taken all but one title since the current regulations were introduced in 2022, but the team is primed to miss out on both championships on this occasion.
Max Verstappen’s reign as champion looks certain to come to an end as he has tumbled 69 points behind, while Red Bull’s gap to McLaren is a staggering 288 points.
Red Bull’s competitiveness relative to the opposition has trended downwards since the side started to experience balance problems with last season’s RB20 machine.
But while those issues have been mitigated in 2025, the RB21 hasn’t been strong enough to grant Verstappen the tools to rival the McLaren duo on a consistent basis.
However, Mekies, who succeeded the long-serving Christian Horner earlier this month, denied that he has established a paramount reason behind the team’s collapse.
Asked whether he has been able to pinpoint where Red Bull has gone wrong, Mekies retorted to media including Motorsport Week: “You do not see weaknesses.
“You see a lot of desires from everyone to get that Red Bull energy to reduce the noise outside, to concentrate on racing. That’s what we’re going to try to do together.”
Why Mekies has complete trust in Red Bull group
Mekies expressed that he possesses no doubts about the personnel at his disposal, citing that the emphasis is on him to provide them with the environment to thrive.
“All I’ve been seeing in these two weeks is extraordinary talents, incredible racing spirit. These guys go on the edge on every single aspect,” he continued.
“There is not a single department where you see a bit of a feeling of lying back or resting.
“They really are at war in the good sense of the word, if I may say, in every single aspect. So that’s what you see in the team.
“So really, in front of that, what we are going to try to do is to make sure that all these women and men, they have everything they need to express themselves at best, that they are supported, that they have all the means that they need to have to show their talent.
“I think they have been showing season after season that they are the best in the world, or if they are not, they are very close.
“The good news is it’s an incredible team. They didn’t win by luck or by mistakes, they won because the accumulation of talents that there is in the buildings is just unbelievable.
“Every small box you open and you look at how they go about a given topic or another thing, and every time you say, ‘Wow, that’s really nice’.
“That’s all coming from the people there at all levels that have been doing amazing jobs for all these years. So that’s how the first two weeks have been.”
Mekies encouraging brave calls at Red Bull
Mekies, who had overseen Red Bull’s satellite squad since 2024, has insisted he will empower the team to be brave as it chases the marginal gains crucial to success.
“But it’s fair to say that the game is changing when you try and fight for the wins, when you’re trying to fight for the championships in how extreme you have to go in every single area to grab the last bit of performance.
“That means you need to make some very bold choices, very bold decisions.
“And this is what you find in all these small boxes we were talking about before, how extreme the team goes about every single detail in order to eventually get that ultimate performance that you need for the sort of ambition that the team has.”
With huge regulation changes on the horizon, Mekies has also quashed the notion that Red Bull is the standalone team on the grid going through a transitional period.
“We normally don’t like very much the world transition in Formula 1. Red Bull F1 has had these two incredible era of success,” he recognised.
“I think that the next one is dictated by the change of regulations for next year and the amazing decisions to go with our own power unit with Ford.
“So that’s what we’ll get to next year. I think all the teams will be starting a new era because of the scale of the change of the regulation next year.”
READ MORE – How Laurent Mekies intends to keep ‘magic’ Max Verstappen at Red Bull
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