maiden podium in Zandvoort<\/a> \u2013 could replace the Japanese driver at Red Bull for 2026, Mekies was asked by Sky Sports F1 what the minimum he needed to see from Tsunoda was to avoid a swap.<\/p>\n\u201cWe don\u2019t think speed can disappear,\u201d Mekies said. \u201cYuki did a very good end of last year, and a very good first part of the season [with Racing Bulls].<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, he has been having a rough time in the first part of the season with this team, but we take it race by race. It was a step forward in Spa. Budapest, it being our worst weekend, he was still very close in terms of pace to Max. He was a tenth and a half away from Max in Qualifying.<\/p>\n
\u201cNormally, if you are a tenth and a half away from Max, it is going to give you a front row. But in Budapest, it meant being kicked out in Q1. He is progressing step by step.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the topic of Red Bull\u2019s 2026 line-up, Mekies added: \u201cWe are not in a rush… We try to do the best we can to support our drivers, and we certainly see some refreshed approach with Yuki and we try to support his progress.\u201d<\/p>\n
Much has been made of the relative drivability of the Red Bull and Racing Bulls cars, with Lawson and Tsunoda both struggling to score points in the Red Bull, while achieving their best results in the sister team.<\/p>\n
Asked what changes Red Bull could make to get Tsunoda more comfortable with the RB21, Mekies said: \u201cPure development for this team, as with most teams, is now focused on 2026. However, it is key that we use these… remaining races to learn what we can on why this season hasn\u2019t gone the way it was supposed to go.<\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially when you are in a situation where you are not where you want to be, there are many things that you can use the race weekends to try and experiment with, and that applies to the team, that applies to the drivers, and that is the work that we are doing with both.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Bull Team Principal Laurent Mekies has declared he will support Yuki Tsunoda through his on-track struggles, while…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-118860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}