Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies is confident the team can avoid a repeat of its unusually poor performance at the last round in Hungary.
Max Verstappen qualified eighth and finished ninth at the Hungaroring while team mate Yuki Tsunoda never spent a single lap higher than 14th. Mekies, who is in his third weekend after replacing Christian Horner in charge of the team, is confident they can avoid repeating that performance even at similar tracks like Zandvoort.
“Budapest was an outstanding low performance for us,” he told Sky. “Clearly we tried many, many things in the weekend but not many things seem to have worked.
“I think the key question then was, is Budapest a one-off, or is it an even bigger worry? And I think we now understand that it’s probably something that is very much linked with what we’ve done at the track there.”
Although Red Bull ended the final practice session today almost a second off McLaren’s pace, Mekies believes they are in better shape than they were at the last round.
“Here, in Zandvoort, similar track characteristics to Budapest and even though we are nowhere near fast enough to compete with McLaren, we are back in the game in being in that group behind the McLarens,” he said.
“We’re far away, the lap time is quite punishing from what you can see in FP3. But we are there trying to get that P3 slot against the best Mercedes, the best Ferrari and perhaps a few other guys.”
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Red Bull is one of only three teams to have brought any development parts to this weekend’s race. Mekies said they will join their rivals in focusing on next year’s car but they intend to use the remainder of the season to understand where they have gone wrong with the RB21.
“In terms of pure development, this team, as most teams in the pit lane, is now focused on 2026,” he said. “However, it is key for us that we use these 10 remaining races to learn what we can learn [about] why this season hasn’t gone the way it was supposed to go.
“There are still many things – especially when you are in a situation where you are not where you want to be – that you can use the race weekends to try and experiment. That applies to the team, that applies to the drivers and that’s the work we are doing with both.”
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2025 Dutch Grand Prix