Laurent Mekies sees how morale at Red Bull is not suffering from the team’s recent disappointing results. The Austrians are currently level with Alpine in the constructors’ championship with sixteen World Championship points; a stark contrast to the title battle Max Verstappen was still fighting with the McLaren drivers at the end of 2025. According to Mekies, there is a ‘burning desire’ in Milton Keynes to return to the top.
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Only sixteen World Championship points after three Grands Prix. That is the result for the Red Bull team so far in 2026. The Austrians are thus experiencing their worst start to a season in over ten years. Max Verstappen is currently ninth in the drivers’ championship, and openly sowed doubt about his Formula 1 future during the Japanese GP. Yet, according to Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies, morale is still high.
‘Attack mode’
“We are doing everything we can to ensure that this does not become a transition year, despite the scale of the challenge. Despite the challenge of the new power unit as well,” says the Frenchman in the Beyond the Grid podcast. Red Bull is on the grid with its own power unit for the first time this season, alongside the completely new chassis the team had to design for the new F1 regulations. “We want to ensure that we are not in a transition year. No. We are not in that mode at all. We are in full attack mode.”
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Earlier, Mekies revealed that Red Bull consciously chose in 2025 to continue developing the then-challenger, the RB21, for Verstappen’s title battle with the McLaren drivers. According to the French team principal, his team is now paying the price for that. “We are not happy with the starting point. However, there is a burning desire to return to a more competitive car, to a better position as quickly as possible,” Mekies says, not giving up hope. “That is what you also feel in Milton Keynes today: that burning urge to gain enough insight into the car so that we can outpace the development of the competition and come back.”
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