Verstappen breaks the McLaren hold

With two out of three wins for Max, could the Laurent Mekies 'common-sense' approach be working? Mark Hughes reports from Zandvoort, Monza and Baku

- Mark Hughes

Max Verstappen’s hopes were not high for his home track of Zandvoort. It’s exactly the sort of medium-speed, long-corner layout which so rewards the McLaren and hurts the Red Bull. What the Red Bull needs are low-downforce tracks like Monza and Baku where its excellent aero efficiency at low wing levels allows it to compete. So this was a very interesting three-race sequence from a Red Bull perspective.

The team long ago released any claim on the 2025 championship, given the unerring dominance of McLaren. The Red Bull RB21 has been no match for the McLaren MCL39 over the full range of circuits. But recently there have been signs of progress. It’s not been so much about new developments (everyone has pretty much switched those off for 2025 as they concentrate on the cars of ’26), as a better understanding of what they have.

Red Bull’s simulation tools have not been serving them too well in the last couple of seasons. It’s become normal for the car to hit the track on Friday horribly ill-balanced and for lots of midnight oil to be burned by the simulator drivers to give something more workable for the rest of the weekend. Max Verstappen’s radioed exasperation with the car has become a regular Friday feature.

But there's been a subtle change of emphasis under new team boss Laurent Mekies' regime. "The engineers are listening more to the driver," Helmut Marko said in Monza. "If you have such a fast and experienced driver I think it's the right way. He has to drive it... The whole technical team is more open to discussing things and they are not blindly taking what the simulation says... it's more based on data [at the track] than whatever the simulation is showing you. It's more about how the experience of Max and the engineers make a car that is predictable and driveable."