Laurent Mekies has said Red Bull\u2019s ongoing development of the RB21 will have a cost for F1 2026, but that cost should come as a net positive.<\/p>\n
Red Bull is still rolling out updates to the RB21 as the F1 2025 season conclusion hoves into view, just a few weeks away.<\/p>\n
Laurent Mekies: Red Bull must understand if RB21 has more performance<\/p>\n
Red Bull, in recent races, has consistently shown up with updates for its RB21, the most of any of the front-running teams. This run of small tweaks and revisions has had some circuit-specific optimisation in mind, but there have been various changes aimed at extracting more performance from the car.<\/p>\n
For example, at the Italian Grand Prix, Red Bull<\/a> brought along a revised floor body with different surfaces, aimed at extracting more aerodynamic load through improved pressure distribution, while the floor fences and edges were revised in tandem.<\/p>\n In Baku, Red Bull had a revised rear corner to re-profile the inboard wing assembly, while in Singapore, the team brought along a revised front wing with locally increased cambers aimed at extracting more aero load.<\/p>\n Across the last five races, Red Bull has introduced 10 declared revisions to the RB21. In contrast, McLaren has introduced five, but four of these were self-declared as being circuit-specific for the low-downforce requirements of Monza.<\/p>\n The steady push from Red Bull has coincided with an improved run of results from Max Verstappen, in which he has scored two second-place finishes and two wins from the most recent four Grands Prix, seeing him close the championship deficit down to 63 points between himself and Oscar Piastri after said gap had ballooned to over 100 points.<\/p>\n Singapore marked the seventh-last weekend of the season, and the seventh-last race of the current regulation cycle. Updates, by and large, are few and far between at this point for most of the teams, as attention has shifted over to the revolutionary F1 2026 regulations, which promise low-hanging fruit for comparatively little effort at this early stage of a vastly different formula.<\/p>\n Red Bull\u2019s push, therefore, is noteworthy for continuing to introduce improvements to a car with a very limited shelf life remaining, and team boss Laurent Mekies has admitted that there will likely be a cost, at this point, to the new RB22 in terms of outright initial performance.<\/p>\n But this isn\u2019t necessarily a negative at this point, as Mekies explained the team\u2019s understanding of newly developed parts matching the data from its own simulations will be imperative \u2013 correlation between these simulations and the wind tunnel with the real-world performance hasn\u2019t always matched up for Red Bull over the last two seasons.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom a Red Bull perspective, and without looking at the other guys around, I think it was, and is, very important that we get to understand if the project has more performance,\u201d Mekies said in Singapore.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important that we get to the bottom of it, because we will elaborate next year\u2019s project, even if the regulations are completely different, with the same tools, with the same methodology.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very important that we validate, with this year\u2019s car, that our way of looking at the data is correct, our way of developing the car is correct, that produces that level of performance \u2013 that will give us confidence in the winter for next year\u2019s car.\u201d<\/p>\n Confirming that Red Bull is understanding what\u2019s being produced and having the real-world performance match up with simulations does mean having to throw some resources at the RB21 at a point where most of the focus across the grid is firmly on next year, but Mekies said this opportunity cost is the right level of risk, in his eyes.<\/p>\n \u201cSo of course, it comes at a cost, undoubtedly, to the \u201926 project,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut we feel it\u2019s the right trade-off for us, without judging what the other guys are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n More analysis from PlanetF1.com:<\/p>\n \ud83d\udc49\u00a0F1 uncovered: Hidden details revealed under the lights in Singapore<\/a><\/p>\n