Laurent Mekies says Red Bull is paying the price in 2026 for having kept development on the 2025 car running through the end of last year, a choice that fueled Max Verstappen’s late title charge but left the new project behind.
He explained the team chose to keep pushing the 2025 car because the title fight was still alive. The engineers believed there were points to win and ground to gain, so they did not want to turn the page early. The call was shaped by the scale of the 2026 rules change and the demands of a new powertrain project. Those two factors raised the risk of a rushed switch. Red Bull decided to extract more from a car it knew, while buying time to understand what the next era would demand.
The payoff came in 2025. Verstappen wiped out a deficit that had grown beyond 100 points. He finished the season two points short of the title. The gain on track validated the choice in the short term. The team proved it could find speed quickly and stack results when the window opened.
The cost has arrived in 2026. After three races, Red Bull sits sixth in the Constructors’ standings on 16 points, level with Alpine. The team has lost the momentum that closed out 2025 and now faces a chase from a lower base. The new rules and a fresh power unit cycle have reshaped the field. Red Bull’s late pivot has left it playing catch-up in understanding and performance.
Mekies accepts that trade-off. He does not frame it as a mistake. He says there is no regret and no search for excuses. The team knew the starting point for 2026 would not be ideal. It chose short-term competitiveness in 2025 and the title fight that came with it. The result supports the logic even as the new season opens with a deficit. He believes the group can climb back, just as it did last year when it turned a deep points gap into a late-season surge.
He also admitted the team did not fully understand the 2025 car’s limits. That gap in knowledge made fixes harder and slower. Some setup paths did not deliver consistent gains, and some upgrades did not unlock the range they expected. That lack of clarity on the outgoing car fed into the current challenge. The carryover lessons were not as clean as hoped, which has added time to the 2026 learning curve.
The current focus is to learn fast and rebuild pace. The engineers are mapping where the 2026 chassis and power unit package departs from their models. They are tracing how those differences affect tire behavior, aero load, and drivability across fuel and balance windows. The aim is to turn early race data into reliable direction and steady gains. Mekies points to last year’s turnaround as proof the team can convert understanding into points once the path is clear.
He stresses that the strategy was deliberate. The team weighed the 2025 fight against the 2026 reset and chose to back the driver and the car in hand. Verstappen’s run to within two points of the title showed the upside of that call. The downside is visible now in the standings. Red Bull starts 2026 from sixth with 16 points, alongside Alpine, and must close a gap it helped create. Mekies says the group accepts that reality and is working to erase it. The plan is to move forward step by step, turn the car into a predictable tool, and bring the field back within reach.