Max Verstappen reveals of a change since the arrival of Laurent Mekies, which has helped Red Bull F1 team to tackle race weekends in a different way.<\/p>\n
Considering the engineering background, Mekies certainly has a different approach to head the Red Bull F1 team than Christian Horner, who was more on commercial and managerial side. The sport has considerable numbers of \u2018engineers\u2019 now, heading the teams as team principal.<\/p>\n
It is a big shift from the recent time when engineers were mostly in different leading position other than team principal. For the first time, Verstappen has discussed about the impact of Mekies at Red Bull. The team made a good turnaround in Monza, with a win after an average run last year.<\/p>\n
Verstappen put it down to different approach, which Mekies brought in since his arrival. It was felt in Zandvoort and it translated well in Monza too. \u201cUp until now we\u2019ve had a lot of races where we were just shooting left and right a little bit with the set-up of the car,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuite extreme changes, which shows that we were not in control. We were not fully understanding what to do. With Laurent having an engineering background, he\u2019s asking the right questions to the engineers \u2013 common-sense questions \u2013 so I think that works really well.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlus, you try to understand from the things that you have tried, that at one point some things give you a bit of an idea of a direction, and that\u2019s what we kept on working on. I definitely felt that in Zandvoort already we took a step that seemed to work quite well, and then here another step which felt again a little bit better,\u201d summed up Verstappen.<\/p>\n
When directly asked about the Monza turnaround and how much it can help for the rest of F1 2025 season, Verstappen didn\u2019t readily believed that they will excel everywhere. He still feels that it will be track dependent, but the positive aspect is how they are managing the races now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s still a bit track dependent, in Monza, you drive low downforce,\u201d continued Verstappen. \u201cIt always seems like our car is a little bit more competitive when it\u2019s low- to medium-downforce. So it\u2019s not like suddenly now we are back. It\u2019s not like we can fight, I think, every single weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the positive is that we seem to understand a little bit more what we need to do with the car to be more competitive. So I hope that that carries on into the coming rounds as well, and some tracks will be a bit better than others,\u201d summed up Verstappen.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s<\/a> Red Bull pair testing for Pirelli<\/p>\n