Red Bull’s decision to keep developing its current car to understand weaknesses will benefit it in 2026 rather than hurt its future chances, according to team principal Laurent Mekies.
The RB21 had further updates at the Mexico City Grand Prix as Red Bull continues to fight for second in the constructors’ championship and Max Verstappen mounts a late charge in the drivers’ standings. Although teams have to make cost cap considerations and many switched complete focus to their 2026 cars some time ago, Mekies says by still working on the current car there are benefits for Red Bull in future.
“With regards to why we have kept developing this car perhaps a little bit more than the competition, it’s nothing to do with ’26,” Mekies said. “I think as we have commented on a few times, it was if we were turning the page at the point of the season where we are very unhappy about this car, not reaching the full potential, then you would go into 2026 with a lot of question marks in your head and with a lot of wishful thinking.
“So we have preferred to invest a little bit more in this car. We tried to unlock what we felt had not worked and got a bit of performance out of it. It gives us a lot more confidence into tools, methodologies, approaches going into 2026. Yes, there is a cost in the amount of time and energy left for that, but that’s the rationale behind it. Nothing to do with the performance whatsoever.
“We are doing it this way because we think for us – leaving alone the other guys – it’s a net gain. We validate our approaches and [that will help] 2026, if we thought it would compromise it, we would not be doing it. We know there is a price to pay. We think it’s reasonable and we think it’s worth it.”
Verstappen move to within 36 points of the championship lead at the Mexico City Grand Prix but he was comfortably beaten by Lando Norris in the McLaren, and Mekies says the title picture has no impact on the way Red Bull goes about each race weekend.
“We are not going to change our approach. We were not looking at the championship five races ago. We were not looking at the championship before Austin, we were not looking after Austin. What we look at is, yes, we do not feel 100 percent good about [Mexico] in terms of car performance.
“That’s where the focus goes now … The focus will be what would we do if we come back here? What can we learn for Brazil?
“The rest, the championship standing is a consequence. It doesn’t change anything for us, whether we are close or far. We still want, as a team, to constantly extract, and leave knowing we have extracted absolutely everything. And that everything is good enough to fight for the win. That wasn’t the case [in Mexico], so that’s where the focus goes.”
