Laurent Mekies has admitted that Red Bull has “nowhere to hide” following a disappointing performance at last weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix.
And he has vowed to investigate why the RB22 car made a “step back” in form following the summer break, suggesting that rival teams have potentially “done a better job” with upgrades.
Red Bull has ‘nowhere to hide’ over RB22 ‘step back’ at Dutch GP
Red Bull appeared to enjoy a turnaround in form prior to the summer break as Max Verstappen claimed three podium finishes in five races, equalling his best result of the F1 2026 season with second place in Hungary.
However, the team had a challenging weekend as the season resumed at Zandvoort, where Verstappen and stand-in teammate Liam Lawson qualified more than half a second adrift of pole position in sixth and seventh respectively.
Verstappen went on to crash out of the race on the opening lap in slippery conditions, with Lawson finishing almost 50 seconds down on the sixth-placed McLaren of Oscar Piastri.
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Mekies has admitted that the RB22 “looked more difficult” to drive in the Netherlands than the races prior to the summer break.
And he is eager to get to the bottom of the team’s dip in competitiveness ahead of the upcoming double-header at Monza and Madrid.
He said: “Performance-wise, I think there is nowhere to hide. It was a very difficult weekend.
“It seems like we have made a bit of a step back compared to where we were before the summer break.
“Of course, we’ll never know what the real pace of the car in the race will have been with Max.
“But it’s fair to say that session after session, it looked more difficult than it was in Budapest or in Spa or in Austria.
“So some tough work for us to do to regroup and to see if it is simply the competition that has done a better job than us at upgrading the car, or if something has been limiting us more than it should have been here in Zandvoort.
“So that will be for us the next two weeks before we fight back into Monza all together.”
Mekies’ comments come after Verstappen admitted that Red Bull’s general lack of pace, not his early exit on race day, was the biggest disappointment of his Dutch Grand Prix weekend.
He told PlanetF1.com and other media outlets: “I think overall we had a disappointing weekend pace-wise. We just couldn’t really fight with the guys ahead, so that’s probably the most disappointing part.
“But of course, I wish that we could have done a little bit more in the race, but looking at the pace that we are showing, I don’t think it was really possible anyway.
“Still would have liked to race, still would have liked to try and do a good job. Hopefully in Monza we can be a little bit more competitive.
“I wish for more, but you need to be realistic this season. We are the fourth-fastest team, so it’s not like rocking up to Zandvoort suddenly we can do some magic things. It’s just how it is.
“Other teams have brought upgrades, we haven’t. When you’re already on the back foot, it’s even more on the back foot.
“So it’s nothing surprising. It’s just the reality that we live in.”
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher
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Originally published by Planet F1 —
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