Red Bull CEO and Team Principal, Laurent Mekies has rued “a very tough” 2025 Hungarian Grand Prix weekend.
Red Bull endured their second-worst weekend of the season as they struggled for pace throughout which culminated in a ninth-placed finish for Max Verstappen, whilst Yuki Tsunoda only finished 17th and a lap down after he started in the pit lane.
Mekies consequently felt that Hungary had been “a very tough weekend” for the team as he explained that they lacked performance despite constant analysis and setup adaptions to try and find more pace.
“We have certainly missed something quite key this weekend and looked at many things with both Yuki and Max, to try to get back to the level we had and get the car in the right window.
The Team have tried everything, but the underlying performance was missing to be able to fight at the top end.”
Such was their performance deficit, Red Bull pitted Verstappen on lap 18 to try and achieve an undercut on Sauber’s Gabriel Bortoleto but the four-time champion eventually finished ninth.
Mekies however believes that Verstappen’s undercut attempt wouldn’t define their race due to his lack of pace, and the same applied to Tsunoda despite his pit lane start.
“The truth is we didn’t have the performance so when we pitted Max wasn’t ultimately going to be defining to the race result, we just did not have the lap time we needed in the car. Yuki was in a similar situation and starting from the pitlane meant he was never able to really make an impact on the field.”
Looking ahead to the summer break and the second half of the season, Mekies feels confident that this weekend’s data will stand them in good stead to try and avoid a repeat scenario in the remaining races.
“What is important this weekend is that we have collected enough data to get out of similar situations in the future and make a positive step forward. These weekends are the ones you learn a lot from and that is what we will do.
“We will spend time reflecting during the break and we don’t underestimate the work ahead of us, we have many, many talented people in the Team to overcome this and we want to come back with a different level of performance after the summer break.”
Tsunoda echoed Mekies’ thoughts as he explained that he is heading straight to Red Bull’s factory in Milton Keynes to investigate their issues, in hope that he can deliver a stronger performance at the Dutch GP in Zandvoort from 29-31 August.
“I am heading straight to the factory tomorrow to go into the Sim, we need to investigate where we went wrong and put in some hard work over the summer break so that we don’t start the next half of the season how we finished this one. It’s frustrating but we will stay positive and bounce back stronger.”
Tsunoda began the season at Racing Bulls but got promoted after just two races due to Liam Lawson’s poor performance, but the 25-year-old is happy with his development despite his deficit to Verstappen.
“Looking back on the season so far I can feel pretty positive, we’ve made progress, especially since the new floor upgrades were brought to Spa. The gap with Max continues to close, it may not feel like we are getting there but on paper we are only 1/10th off his pace, I’m not sure many other drivers could get as close to him.”