Red Bull Racing team principal Laurent Mekies: “There’s no sugar-coating it”

For Red Bull Racing, it was an emotional rollercoaster at Zandvoort: ahead of the race weekend came the bitter news that Isack Hadjar would miss the Dutch Grand Prix due to a wrist injury. Liam Lawson from the Racing Bulls was promoted to the sister team to replace the Frenchman. He went on to secure a solid seventh place on his 2026 debut for Red Bull Racing. Also ahead of the race weekend, the team announced some good news: four-time world champion Max Verstappen has extended his contract with Red Bull Racing on a long-term basis.

Things then did not go at all as hoped at the Dutch Grand Prix: Verstappen crashed right at the start of his final home race (Zandvoort is to be dropped from the calendar in future). The Dutchman crashed heavily into the barriers on lap 2 and was out of the race. He had skidded off the rain-soaked track. Fortunately, however, Verstappen was not injured in the incident.

Mekies: A difficult weekend!

Red Bull Racing team principal Laurent Mekies said after the Zandvoort race: “It was a difficult weekend. The most important thing is that Max is fine. It was quite a heavy crash, and we were all relieved that he was able to get out of the car uninjured. That’s the most important thing.”

No points for Verstappen, who had started the race from a disappointing seventh on the grid. Hadjar’s stand-in, Liam Lawson, managed to finish seventh in an unfamiliar car and secured six points as a result. Nevertheless, it was a result that fell far short of the team’s own expectations, as Mekies had to admit.

Performance cannot be sugar-coated

Mekies: “As far as performance is concerned, there’s no sugar-coating it. It was a very tough weekend, and it seems as though we’ve taken a small step backwards compared to where we were before the summer break.”

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The Frenchman points out: “Of course, we’ll never know what the car’s actual pace would have been in the race with Max, but you can definitely say that it was significantly more difficult for us throughout the sessions than it was in Austria, Belgium or Hungary.” On each of those occasions, the team secured a podium finish (Verstappen second at Spielberg, third at Spa and second at Budapest).

Have the rivals improved?

Mekies: “We now have a lot of hard work ahead of us to get our act together and find out whether it’s simply down to the competition having done a better job than us in developing the car, or whether something here at Zandvoort has held us back a bit more than it really should have. We’ll be looking into this over the next two weeks before we strike back together at Monza.” Following a week’s break, the Italian Grand Prix takes place on 6 September.