Mekies after Austrian GP qualifying: 'Apologise to Max'

Published on 27 June 2026 by Niels Hendrix

Laurent Mekies, team principal and CEO of Oracle Red Bull Racing, reflected on the Austrian Grand Prix qualifying and said: “The most important thing after this eventful qualifying session is that Max is okay. He delivered an excellent first run in Q3, and his final run was very fast until he lost the car in turn 9. The dynamic of the incident was quite unusual, and we lost aero performance on the rear of the car and it gave Max no chance to survive. As a team we take full responsibility for it and apologise to him.”

Mekies continued: “Not sending Max out for a second run in Q2 was certainly a close call, but we knew we had to take some risks after deciding to approach qualifying with only three new sets of softs to give ourselves more strategic options for the race.”

At Spielberg the RB22 received an upgrade. Mekies explained: “With any significant upgrade, it is never simply a case of plug-and-play. The real challenge is to understand the package, identify its optimum operating window and maximise its potential over the course of the weekend. We are still learning but today was an encouraging first step. The improved pace we had demonstrated the progress we have made with the package we have brought to Austria.”

“A huge thank you to everyone back at the factory. This large upgrade package, covering many aspects of the car and PU, is the result of the hard work across the entire team. Seeing that effort reflected in our competitiveness today is a well-deserved reward for everyone involved. Our full focus now turns to tomorrow. Another extremely hot race awaits us, and it will be interesting to see how we perform in these conditions.”