Max Verstappen 'is motorsport' as Red Bull boss hails single-minded approach

Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies believes Max Verstappen encapsulates motorsport entirely, praising the Dutch driver for his approach to racing.

The four-time F1 World Champion missed out on a fifth title during the F1 2025 season, narrowly beaten by McLaren’s Lando Norris, but has remained the number one driver on the grid according to an anonymous vote of the F1 team bosses.

Laurent Mekies: Max Verstappen lives day and night with motorsport

Verstappen’s title defeat came in a year in which the Dutch driver began experimenting with racing outside of Formula 1 as a way to find a new challenge, as the Red Bull car proved less competitive during the first half of the championship.

Expanding into GT3 racing with appearances at the Nurburgring, Verstappen also kept up his usual schedule of online sim racing when not in the midst of a Grand Prix weekend.

In his usual day job, Verstappen kept pumping in strong results and, when the Red Bull became a more consistent machine in the second half of the championship, took multiple victories en route to the runner-up spot in the championship after applying serious pressure to the McLaren drivers in the closing races.

His achievement saw him pick up the team bosses’ vote for the best driver on the grid in F1 2025, a vote that is held completely anonymously. However, Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies was one of two not to take part in the vote, with Ferrari’s Fred Vasseur being the other.

However, while Mekies may not have had the opportunity to vote, the Frenchman has spoken glowingly about his experience with Verstappen in 2025, having got to know him better during the season.

Mekies was promoted to the role of team boss at Red Bull in July, uniting him with Verstappen for the first time, having missed out on working with him at Toro Rosso a decade ago as Mekies moved to the FIA in 2015.

In the six months since, Mekies has seen first-hand how Verstappen approaches his racing, and has seen what he does differently to the other drivers Mekies has worked with during his career.

“As much as we have spent, all of us, too many years in Formula 1 and seen Max doing unbelievable achievements, all I can tell you is that when you get the chance to work on his side of the paddock…” he told select media, including PlanetF1.com, at the Qatar Grand Prix.

“The quality of technical feedback, the level of sensitivity that he has of the car… we used to have this trouble, we just say he is the best sensor we have in the car, arguably the most expensive!

“Not only that, but then the guy lives, day and night, with motorsport, day and night, probably more than any of us. So he is motorsport, in some respect.

“He’s not escaping from a meeting to do something else. He’s completely immersed in it. In between the races, he’s doing his sim racing, probably with something in his mind about something he can learn or improve on his driving, on his preparations for the next race.

“If he has a free weekend, he goes racing somewhere with some GT3, that’s something that looks completely unreal from our side, and, as a matter of fact, is unreal.

“He does that with the capacity to immerse himself in the projects, not to judge it from outside, but to find the right keys, to make sure that we all push in the same direction, to make sure that we all appreciate what he’s trying to tell us on the car.”

Max Verstappen ‘is motorsport’ as Red Bull boss hails single-minded approach

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