Laurent Mekies was swift to pay tribute to both Red Bull and Max Verstappen in the wake of the Dutchman’s victory in the Qatar Grand Prix, which was achieved despite the RB21 not being a match for the McLaren on pace across the weekend as a whole.
Verstappen’s win was teed up by the decision to pit under the early Lap 7 Safety Car, with the Dutchman the first to pull into the pit lane, with both McLaren cars staying out. That enabled Verstappen to jump ahead of his rivals once Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris did pit, and he held on to win the race by a comfortable margin.
His victory also ensured he leapfrogged Piastri into second in the Drivers’ Championship and is now just 12 points behind Norris, meaning there will be a three-way fight for the title next weekend in the final race of the season.
“We can definitely be happy with that one,” Mekies said after the race. “The pace in the car steadily improved from Friday night when we were in a tricky position, to tonight when we could fight with the McLarens, which is a testament to the team once again.
“Of course, the decisive moment was the call to come in under the Safety Car and it was another great call from our strategy team here and those working back in Milton Keynes. From there on, Max didn’t put a foot wrong, drove two incredible stints, taking great care of his tyres and managed to create a solid gap to the McLarens, which drove us to this most welcome race win.”
Mekies admitted he and his team were “surprised” that McLaren did not pit at least one car under the Safety Car. With the Qatar race being 57 laps long and the tyres only allowed to complete a maximum of 25 laps thanks to a mandate from Pirelli, the Safety Car coming out when it did enabled most of the field to file in for a ‘cheap’ pit stop.
“We were very surprised because on our side we had sort of pre-decided that that would be the first lap we can take it and [that] we would take it,” he added. “But I cannot judge for what was their thought process at that moment. But yes, we were very surprised, yes.”
But what made Mekies the happiest was the fact that Red Bull turned a difficult car that was off the pace of the McLaren into one that was competitive for the Grand Prix. That was no mean feat considering that Qatar’s track layout played to all their rival’s strengths.
“We are behind from Friday by a large amount, four or five tenths, which was painful,” Mekies explained. “Then everyone has done an amazing job back at base and here at the racetrack to continue to try to put the car in different windows to see if we could close that gap. We were expecting McLaren to be strong in that circuit.
“It’s a long mid-speed corner on which they have been killing us on quite a few tracks. I remember Zandvoort, I remember Budapest. It’s really the tracks where they know they have an advantage.
“Now, the gap reduced to somewhat the two tenths of Qualifying, two and a half tenths of Qualifying… but I think we were closer than that in the race. I don’t know if we are just matching, or only half a tenth slower, or maybe half a tenth faster, but we are certainly not two and a half tenths slower per lap, so I think we are very close in the race.”
Keeping close to McLaren enabled Verstappen’s strategy to play out, as it meant McLaren could never build enough of an advantage to pit and come back out in front – despite running in free air.
And Mekies laid the credit for the victory equally at the door of both the team and his four-time World Champion, who remains in the hunt for a fifth title.
“I will just tell you this team had never given up, kept trying, kept developing, and cracked one thing, cracked a bit more, cracked a bit more, and eventually got the car in a better place,” he said. “As you can see, weekend in, weekend out, it’s still incredibly difficult, and that’s it.
“[Verstappen] never gets it wrong, he never misses a start, he never misses a Turn 1, he’s going to extract more out of the tyres than most people out there…
“The team has been extraordinary at strong executions, so it is true we have benefited from our competitors’ less strong executions, but please allow me to give credit to the incredible string of massively strong races, massively strong executions from the team [who] never got a call wrong.”
Verstappen goes into the season finale in Abu Dhabi 12 points behind Norris and four ahead of Piastri. His fate is not in his own hands – even if he wins the race he is not guaranteed the title. But he is in with a shout, which when he trailed by over 100 points earlier in the season, never seemed possible.