Laurent Mekies has conceded Red Bull are paying the price in 2026 after developing last year’s car late into the season, as Max Verstappen launched an incredible title comeback – the Dutchman eventually fell just two points short of Lando Norris in his bid for a fifth consecutive championship.
The Milton Keynes-based outfit have had a tricky start to the new 2026 season, amid sweeping new regulations, with reliability issues costing the team early on along with a lack of pace. Additionally the squad are producing their own power unit for the first time, in partnership with Ford, with plenty of learnings to come in that ambitious project.
While four-time champion Verstappen only has a season’s best finish of sixth to look back on in the opening three rounds of 2026 so far, that is in stark contrast to the form Red Bull showed in the latter half of a thrilling 2025 season. Having not been in contention for much of the first half of the year, upgrades following the mid-season break helped catapult Red Bull and Verstappen back up to the top with the Dutchman winning six of the last nine races.
With Mekies also taking charge at Red Bull himself midway through the year – the Frenchman was promoted from his role at Racing Bulls to replace the outgoing Christian Horner in June – the squad faced a decision of going all out in 2025 in a bid for Verstappen’s fifth title or writing off the season to focus on 2026 and the new regulations.
Though both the team and Verstappen ultimately fell two points short of 2026 champion Norris, Mekies insisted no one at Red Bull wanted to turn the page on 2025, even though they knew it might hurt their chances in 2026.
“[Verstappen’s comeback] made me feel so happy for the girls and the guys in the team because they had such a difficult start of the season last year,” Mekies told Beyond The Grid.
“The car was not performing at the level they were hoping. The pressure was high. You come to the middle of the season and you get a new boss. With the new regulations coming for 2026, with the new power unit projects, there were all the reasons in the world to say, ‘well, you know what? Let’s turn the page, 2025 did not work. Let’s concentrate on 2026′.
“You would have been mad to do anything differently, to want to do things differently. The truth is, nobody wanted to do that in Milton Keynes. Nobody wanted to turn the page. They all wanted to get to the bottom of that ‘25 car, get to the bottom of what didn’t work, and turn things around.
“And yes, they knew there would be a price to pay later, but that’s how deep is the fighting spirit in the team. They all put the extra effort to try to understand what was limiting us, try to bring upgrades and solutions to cure the issues we had, taking a huge amount of risk in doing so.”
While Verstappen’s form was exemplary in the latter half of 2025 as he chased the title once more, his results in 2026 have been more challenging. The Dutchman finished sixth in Australia, ninth in the Shanghai Sprint, retired from the Chinese Grand Prix and came home eighth in the Japanese Grand Prix.
Isack Hadjar, Verstappen’s new team mate for 2026, has had similar results having had to retire in Melbourne before recording a P8 and a P12 finish in the two subsequent Grands Prix. With Red Bull currently sixth (behind Alpine and Haas) in the Teams’ Standings, there is work to do to catch up to the frontrunners.
“We thought and we still think it was the right thing to do, because we felt that turning the page to ‘26 would have been a little bit of an easy escape and a wishful thinking that next year will be better, even though we didn’t fully understand what were the limitations of 2025,” added Mekies.
“We didn’t think it was the right way. Now, of course, the time and energy we invested for the late push last year, does it have an impact on where you start ’26? Of course it does. Of course, we pay a bit of the price today. Do we use it as an excuse? No.
“We are not happy with the starting point. But we think we will get through these difficulties. As we did last year, we will get the full understanding of the limitations. And this team has been very, very good in turning things around and we have another chance to do it this year.”
While Mekies could use last year’s late development push, as well as the first year of Red Bull running their own power units, as an excuse to label 2026 a “transition year” the Frenchman instead insisted the team were still in “attack mode.”
“We try to do everything we can to make sure this is not a transition year, despite the size of the challenge, despite the new power unit challenge,” he said. “We want to make sure that we are not in a transition year. No. We are not at all in that mode. We are in full attack mode.
“As we said, not happy about the starting point. But if you walk in Milton Keynes right now, there is fire in every single department. There is a burning fire of wanting to go back as fast as possible to a more competitive car, to a better position.
“And that’s what you feel in Milton Keynes today, is that burning drive to get enough understanding and development to the car, in a way that we can outperform the development of the competition and get back up.”
