Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies admitted the 2026 British GP exposed the limitations of the team’s current F1 package.
After Max Verstappen’s strong showing in Austria—where the four-time world champion was in contention for the win on Sunday despite suffering a costly rear-wing issue in qualifying—the team endured a much tougher weekend at the British GP. Verstappen complained throughout the event that the RB22 never felt comfortable—even arguing for a pitlane start just to make more significant changes to the set-up—before another technical problem ultimately ended his race while he was running third on Lap 48.
Mekies explains Red Bull’s struggles at 2026 British GP
Reflecting on the contrast between the two weekends, Mekies told the media after the 2026 British GP, “It’s a good representation of the complexity of where we are with the cars.”
He stated that Red Bull was hampered by “strong limitations” in Silverstone.
“A week ago we were fighting for the win and a few days later here in Silverstone we were hitting some pretty strong limitations that stopped us from expecting everything we could out of our package,” Mekies said.
The Red Bull team boss explained that the struggles became more pronounced at circuits that placed greater emphasis on energy management.
“Yes, we think it is compounding with a track like Silverstone where when there is an energy starving, we seem to be struggling more—so on tracks where energy limitations are strong, we seem to be struggling more compared to competition.”
Mekies expects Belgian GP to be another challenging weekend
The 49-year-old admitted he expects the team’s British GP struggles to carry over into the next round at Spa-Francorchamps, as the Belgian circuit shares several characteristics with Silverstone.
“In that respect, I’m afraid Spa is probably in that category as well,” he said.
“It doesn’t mean that we give up and become impatient, it means that sooner or later we will need to improve later on that. It’s about improving at 360 degrees, that is what we try to do every day.
“So we will need to use this weekend to make a small step forward in this sort of tracks, I hope for Spa.”
On a more positive note, Mekies praised the team’s ability to react quickly to emerging problems.
“I trust that the team is learning very quickly, they are going to get around this sort of energy starving track, there may be hardware limitations, but I equally know that the team is extraordinary at learning fast.”
Budapest may be more favourable for Red Bull
Mekies suggested the late-July round in Hungary could provide a more favourable opportunity for Red Bull to evaluate its progress.
“So I hope we can be in a slightly better shape in Spa, but you are right in saying that from a characteristic perspective it should be quite similar to here, and then hopefully Budapest paints a different picture,” Mekies said.
