Mekies after Max's eighth-place finish at Suzuka: 'A lot of work to do'

Published on 29 March 2026 by Coen Versteeg

Laurent Mekies, team principal and CEO of Oracle Red Bull Racing, said after the Japanese Grand Prix: “Today we learned a lot more about where our car’s current limitations are. It was important for us to get involved in those battles and for both Max and Isack to complete the race distance, so we could continue to gather more data. Of course, we have a lot of work to do and we now have a few weeks to try and find some fixes for those limitations."

He continues: "At the moment, what is important is to work on the performance gap to the guys ahead of us. There is not just one area we can pinpoint as being the cause of our difficulties and we need to work on all areas. It feels bad now, but I have full confidence in the team. During the break, we are going to take a deep dive into our data, and take it to our simulator. We won’t have solved everything by the next race, but the team will do the heavy lifting and get to the bottom of our difficulties.  I have full confidence that, with everyone giving a massive push in Milton Keynes, we will make the most of the coming weeks to move forward and bring improvements to Miami.”