{"id":15607,"date":"2025-07-23T09:17:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T09:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/15607\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T09:17:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T09:17:11","slug":"jolyon-palmer-explains-what-laurent-mekies-best-use-is-at-red-bull-after-his-racing-bulls-promotion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/15607\/","title":{"rendered":"Jolyon Palmer explains what Laurent Mekies’ ‘best use’ is at Red Bull after his Racing Bulls promotion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Laurent Mekies has a massive task on his hands to turn Red Bull\u2019s operation back into a winning one after struggling for the last few seasons.<\/p>\n

Even though Max Verstappen<\/a> won the drivers\u2019 championship<\/a> last year, they spent the second half of the campaign clearly trailing McLaren, and 2025 has been the same case.<\/p>\n

It would be wise for Mekies<\/a> to focus on making sure that the team are well placed for the 2026 F1 regulations<\/a>, especially since they are making their own power units.<\/p>\n

But that would be an admission of failure by Red Bull<\/a> for the first time since 2020. They\u2019re not building the positive momentum that they would hope into the new rules.<\/p>\n

Red Bull now fear a \u2018personnel haemorrhage\u2019<\/a> amid rumours that ex-boss Christian Horner could join a rival team in the future.<\/p>\n

Losing more talent than they already have would be detrimental. It could convince Verstappen to move to 542-point Mercedes rivals<\/a> for next season.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Juan Pablo Montoya believes he\u2019s now seen a \u2018sign\u2019 that suggests Max Verstappen\u2019s move to Mercedes is close<\/a><\/p>\n

\"MaxPhoto by Kym Illman\/Getty ImagesLaurent Mekies\u2019 \u2018best use\u2019 at Red Bull is to help fix Yuki Tsunoda in 2025<\/p>\n

Helmut Marko has fired Red Bull a \u2018disaster\u2019 warning<\/a> and wants to see improvements from the team coming very soon.<\/p>\n

The trend that their car has followed is not positive, and it has hurt Yuki Tsunoda\u2019s<\/a> confidence this season. He cannot seem to find a strong result in the RB21.<\/p>\n

Jolyon Palmer believes that new boss Mekies will be able to help get the best out of the Japanese driver, and that it could be his \u2018best use\u2019 of time in 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s probably the best use of him in the immediacy. Is to work out where, because if you\u2019ve got two cars that are the same, you have to understand why one driver is so good, and the other one isn\u2019t,\u201d he told the F1 Nation podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven Red Bull as a team are scratching their heads thinking \u2018How can no one get near Max?\u2019 So when you\u2019ve got now a team principal that hasn\u2019t worked with Max in this capacity. <\/p>\n

\u201cChristian had sort of developed Max into the champion that he is, always coming through with Red Bull and they won their titles together. Laurent has actually come from working with Yuki Tsunoda and with Liam Lawson in the past,\u201d continued Palmer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was his first foray into being a team principal. He\u2019s kind of the underdog mentality, so I think he\u2019s going to be definitely arm around Yuki, and thinking, \u2018Come on, you were great when you drove with me, you were qualifying up in the front three rows. What is going on here?\u2019 <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd trying to understand the second driver role a bit more, which I think will be helpful. Whether or not he\u2019ll be able to actually find a performance there is, is obviously the bigger head scratcher for the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE: \u2018A lot of people\u2019 around Max Verstappen have made it clear which team they want him to race for in 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

How poor has Yuki Tsunoda\u2019s 2025 F1 season been so far?<\/p>\n

Just 12 races into the season, and Tsunoda\u2019s best result of the year is a ninth place he earned in Bahrain in his second race for Red Bull.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s currently on a run of five races without a point, and at the same stage last year, he had already managed two seventh-place finishes.<\/p>\n

In total, he had seven separate points finishes after 12 rounds, compared to just three this year, and was driving what is theoretically a worse car.<\/p>\n

However, the crucial difference is that it may be a lot easier to set up and drive than the RB21. Mekies\u2019 task, knowing Tsunoda from the Racing Bulls setup, is to get him driving at a 2024 level again at the very least.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Laurent Mekies has a massive task on his hands to turn Red Bull\u2019s operation back into a winning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,17134,14758,806,805,803,804,946,85,9806],"class_list":["post-15607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-jolyon-palmer","tag-laurent-mekies","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-sports","tag-visa-cash-app-racing-bulls"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15607","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=15607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}