Mekies after sprint and qualifying Chinese GP: 'Tricky weekend so far'

Published on 14 March 2026 by Coen Versteeg

Laurent Mekies, team principal and CEO of Oracle Red Bull Racing, said after the sprint race and qualifying in Shanghai: “It has certainly been a tricky weekend so far and it started in a difficult way in FP1 yesterday already. From the first laps we couldn’t find the same feeling from the car that we had in Melbourne last week, so that has been a bit of a struggle. Max, Isack, and the whole team have been working very hard to close the gap to the competition and to recover a better feeling with the car. We made a little bit of progress to close the gap in terms of performance but it’s of course not enough and not something we can be happy with. The most important aspect is that we complete our understanding during the race tomorrow of why it has been more difficult for us this weekend compared to Melbourne. In all cases, there will be huge learnings to take in tomorrow’s race: as we have seen in Melbourne and in the Sprint this morning, there will not be a lack of on-track actions and we will be working hard to take any opportunities that may come our way.”