Red Bull Team Principal Laurent Mekies admitted the team has plenty of work to do after a difficult Dutch Grand Prix weekend, with Max Verstappen crashing out on the opening lap and Liam Lawson salvaging seventh place.
Verstappen’s final home race at Zandvoort ended in dramatic fashion. The Dutchman made contact with Lewis Hamilton and his Red Bull team-mate Lawson during the chaotic opening lap before running onto the slippery white lines on the damp circuit.
He subsequently lost control of the car and hit the barriers heavily, bringing out the red flags. Verstappen was thankfully able to walk away from the accident unhurt, but his final Dutch Grand Prix was over almost immediately.
With Verstappen out, Lawson was left to carry Red Bull’s hopes. The New Zealander endured a relatively lonely race as the Red Bull lacked the pace to challenge the cars further up the order, but he brought the car home in seventh despite receiving a penalty for a yellow-flag infringement.
Mekies admitted that Verstappen’s safety was the team’s primary concern following the crash.
“A difficult weekend for the Team in Zandvoort. First of all, I think the most important thing is that Max is okay. It was a pretty big shunt and we were all glad to see him get out of the car unharmed. That’s what matters the most.
The bigger concern for Red Bull, however, was the lack of performance demonstrated throughout the weekend. After appearing more competitive at recent races before the summer break, the team struggled to match McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari at Zandvoort.
“Performance-wise, there’s nowhere to hide. It was a very tough weekend, and it seems like we have taken a bit of a step backwards compared to where we were before the summer break.
“Of course, we’ll never know what the real pace of the car would have been in the race with Max, but it’s fair to say that as the sessions progressed it was clearly more difficult for us than in Austria, Belgium or in Hungary.
While Verstappen’s DNF left Red Bull without its leading driver for the majority of the race, Mekies praised Lawson for making the most of his opportunity after stepping into the team.
The New Zealander qualified just over a tenth behind Verstappen on Saturday before converting his eighth-place grid position into seventh in the Grand Prix.
“Beyond that, Liam did a good job stepping into Isack’s car this weekend. It’s never easy to step into a different team and different car but he did very well.
“He was just one tenth away from Max yesterday in qualifying and today took he the points that were available to him with the seventh place.
Mekies also highlighted the involvement of Isack Hadjar, who was unable to race at Zandvoort, saying the weekend would nevertheless provide useful information for the team going forward.
“Even though he wasn’t in the cockpit, Isack with us this weekend, taking the learnings from it and that will help us to all push together as strongly for the next race.”
With Red Bull now facing a significant performance deficit, Mekies said the team will spend the break analysing whether its rivals have made a bigger step with their upgrades or whether something specific limited the RB’s performance at Zandvoort.
“A lot of work for us to do, to regroup and to see whether the competition has done a better job on upgrades, or whether something has limited us more than it should have here in Zandvoort. That will be the task over the next two weeks, before we fight back in Monza.”
