Red Bull team boss Laurent Mekies insists Max Verstappen’s 2025 Formula 1 title hopes remain alive but says the team’s focus stays firmly on each race weekend rather than the championship narrative.
After taking pole position for today’s Sprint Race at the Circuit of the Americas ahead of the McLaren pair of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, Verstappen has renewed momentum in his late-season charge to close the gap to the McLaren duo in the standings.
The Dutchman trails championship leader Piastri by 63 points with six rounds to go, but his form since Red Bull’s Singapore upgrade has revived belief inside Milton Keynes. Mekies said the title fight was not part of the team’s internal discussion: “I’m going to disappoint you a bit. The simple truth inside the team is we simply take it race by race.
“I know it sounds like something you would just say in this room, but if you walk into our engineering room now, nobody talks about that—neither before the Grand Prix nor after the weekend. We only talk about this race,” insisted the Red Bull team boss.
Red Bull confident upgrades have put them back in contention
Since introducing their major aerodynamic upgrade package at Singapore, Red Bull have been closer to the front at every round, with Verstappen now regularly splitting or beating the McLarens.
Mekies believes that consistency can now be sustained: “I think that’s fair to say. We think we have enough potential in the car now to be in the fight on most tracks going forward. It doesn’t mean that we will be able to win, but it probably means that if we do nail everything, extract everything out of the car on a given track, then we think we will be able to fight for the win.”
Asked whether Verstappen’s self-assessed “50/50” title odds were realistic, Mekies refused to put numbers on it: “No, I won’t put a number on it. But I don’t think it changes anything to the way we are going racing. We love pure racing. So we go to a race weekend like here in Austin, and there are probably four teams that can win the race on Sunday.”
With Formula 1’s new power unit and chassis rules coming in 2026, Mekies said Red Bull are already carrying lessons across seasons: “There are many things we can take to 2026. It is a clean sheet from the point of view of designing a car and obviously designing a PU, but it remains the fact that you will use the same people, you will use the same methodology, the same process, the same tools to go and design that car.”
Mekies: Not worried about 2026
He credited the team’s turnaround to collective persistence: “It’s important to underline that the turnaround is due to the women and men in Milton Keynes who have been working on this car, not accepting the limitations of the project, trying to find solutions, not giving up, balancing 2025 and 2026.
That’s a very large group that is led by Pierre, that has managed to turn it around after weeks and months of effort.”
Despite growing concerns that the 2026 regulations could increase performance gaps, Mekies said he remains optimistic: “Not worried. The feeling we get from jumping into the unknown is a very positive one. Even if there is an increased spread in the field, it’s difficult to do better than now. You have four teams that can win pretty much every race moving forward—that’s difficult to match.”
As Verstappen lines up from pole in today’s Sprint, Red Bull’s revival continues to gather strength. With McLaren still leading both championships but under mounting pressure, Austin may yet prove a decisive weekend in the 2025 Formula 1 title fight.