Laurent Mekies wants to ‘reorganize’ Red Bull after a disappointing Dutch GP, stating that the team took a ‘step back’ during the Formula 1 summer break.
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In Zandvoort, the team had a difficult round, first with the absence of Isack Hadjar due to a wrist fracture, promoting Liam Lawson to his place. In the race, Max Verstappen crashed on the first lap and the New Zealander still jumped to seventh place.
About the accident, the director showed relief seeing the four-time F1 champion coming out well. “A tough weekend in Zandvoort. First of all, the most important thing is that Max is okay. It was a pretty hard crash, and we were all happy to see him out of the car, unharmed; that’s what matters most.”
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Then, evaluating the race performance, Mekies pointed out that “in terms of performance, there’s no hiding. It was a very tough weekend. It seems we took a small step back compared to where we were before the summer break.”
“Of course, we will never know what the real pace of the car would have been in the race with Max, but it’s fair to say that, session after session, the situation seemed more difficult than in Budapest, Spa, or Austria; so, we have hard work ahead to reorganize ourselves and check if it was simply the competition doing a better job than us in the car’s development, or if there was something limiting us more than it should have in Zandvoort. That will be our focus in the next two weeks, before trying to react together in Monza,” he concluded.
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