Former F1 driver Karun Chandhok has noted Red Bull feels like a \u201cdifferent team\u201d this year with Christian Horner no longer at the helm.<\/p>\n
Horner was ousted from his team principal role midway through the 2025 season and was replaced by Laurent Mekies.<\/p>\n
Mekies graduated from the team boss role at Racing Bulls and led the senior squad into a new era under fresh technical regulations.<\/p>\n
The team also promoted Isack Hadjar to the second race seat this year, reuniting the Frenchman with his compatriot.<\/p>\n
When asked if working with Mekies once again is a confidence boost for Hadjar’s debut Red Bull campaign, Chandhok told Sky F1: \u201cIt must be.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a very different team. Now, Christian Horner is gone, Helmut Marko is gone.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the first full year of the Laurent Mekies era at Red Bull. I think it is perhaps a less high-pressure environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Red Bull has traditionally been ruthless with its line-up decisions, with Hadjar the next name in a long line of drivers who have struggled alongside Max Verstappen.<\/p>\n
Although the team has endured a difficult run of form at the start of the current campaign, Chandhok has been impressed by how Hadjar has adjusted.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn’t work, did it, piling on that pressure of giving Liam Lawson two races to prove himself in the seat,\u201d\u00a0Chandhok said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s never going to work. So I hope, for Isack’s sake, that this carries on. They don’t need him to beat Max.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey need him to be a tenth or two behind Max and just make sure that on a day where Max has an issue, or something happens, he’s there.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust be right behind him, and so far he’s been there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former F1 driver Karun Chandhok has noted Red Bull feels like a \u201cdifferent team\u201d this year with Christian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-585697","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-daniel-ricciardo","11":"tag-f1-calendar","12":"tag-f1-live","13":"tag-f1-results","14":"tag-f1-standings","15":"tag-ferrari","16":"tag-formula-1","17":"tag-lewis-hamilton","18":"tag-max-verstappen","19":"tag-motor","20":"tag-motor-sports","21":"tag-motorsport","22":"tag-motosport","23":"tag-motosports","24":"tag-racing","25":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585697","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=585697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}