Photo: Red Bull Content Pool
Mekies: Miami upgrades should help Red Bull, but no miracles expected
Red Bull plans to introduce upgrades at the Miami Grand Prix, with Laurent Mekies confident of progress but not a dramatic turnaround.
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Red Bull is set to bring upgrades to the Miami Grand Prix as it looks to recover from a difficult start to the 2026 Formula 1 season. However, team principal Laurent Mekies has warned that any improvement is unlikely to immediately close the gap to the front.
The team has slipped behind Mercedes, McLaren and Ferrari in the early rounds, with Max Verstappen openly frustrated by the situation. The upcoming break in the calendar, caused by the cancelled Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix, has given Red Bull valuable time to focus on development.
“I’m confident that we will use that break to make a very good step forward.We need time to deep-dive into our data, we need the time to simulate back what we see in the data into the tunnel, into our simulator, try some sensitivities and all of that we can do without racing," said Mekies, as quoted by Crash.net.
"Does it mean you come to Miami and you have solved everything as a miracle? No, but again, am I confident that the team will get to the bottom of that understanding and start bringing improvements already in Miami. That's what we will see but only the track and the lap time will give us an indication on whether we go into the right directions,” the Red Bull Racing boss added.
Mekies made it clear that expectations must remain realistic given the current deficit.
"I don't think we should expect miracles about the amplitude of closing the gap because the is substantial but what we would like to see is to have a car where our drivers can push again, measure a gap to competitions in these conditions when we are able to push and then the rest will be pure development to the end of the year,” he said.
Red Bull’s struggles were most visible in China, where the team lost ground not only to the leaders but also to the midfield.
"We certainly think that in China we made a step back and we measure that not only against the top guys but also against the midfield that got closer to us, so in China we for sure made a step back. I don't think it's a product of the number of corners only. There's a layer where in certain cornering speed and cornering conditions we lose some performance compared to what our package is supposed to give us, so this we need to work on,” conluded Mekies.
