Red Bull F1 team principal Laurent Mekies admitted his squad is “very far” from the frontrunners in Japan after crippling balance issues have left his drivers off the pace.
Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar ended the day in 10th and 15th respectively, over 1.3 seconds off the front, after Red Bull struggled to dial in the balance of its RB22.
Verstappen feared there would be “no easy fix” for Red Bull’s car woes after set-up changes turned understeer into oversteer between Friday’s two practice sessions, and his team boss Mekies felt that pessimism was warranted.
“We are very far, lacking quite a lot of performance,” he told Sky Germany. “I think you can also hear it with the comments of our drivers. We have been unable so far to give them a car they could push with. So, we have quite a few fundamental things to sort out on our side.
“Of course, you don’t want to have to go through this problem-solving, but I think it’s part of the game and we just need to get to the bottom of our limitation as soon as possible and make the steps we need to make.”
Laurent Mekies, Red Bull Racing Team Principal
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Formula 1 via Getty Images
Mekies said Red Bull’s problems go much further than its balance issues through medium-to-high-speed corners, including Suzuka’s famed Esses in sector one, where its cars looked unsettled.
“It looks particularly bad in the high-speed corners. I don’t think it’s only a balance issue,” the Frenchman explained. “I think there are probably some aspects of the car that we haven’t unlocked well or that we haven’t understood quite yet. It’s the work we have to do now in the next few hours, in the next few days and probably in the next few weeks to get back to the level we want to be.
“It is clear that when you speak with Max, when you speak with Isack; they don’t have a car they can push with. How much of that can we recover for tomorrow? Let’s see. It’s difficult to know right now whether what we are missing is within the car balance or whether there are things a bit more fundamental that we will need to correct.”
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