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Max Verstappen credits Laurent Mekies engineering background for the step forward Red Bull has taken.
His comments come in the wake of a strong performance at Zandvoort and a total drubbing of McLaren at Monza.
Under Mekies, Racing Bulls had taken an obvious step forward and now the Frenchman, who was previously Racing Director at Ferrari and Safety and Race Director at the FIA, is working his magic with Red Bull.
“Up until now we’ve had a lot of races where we were just shooting left and right a little bit with the setup of the car,” said Verstappen in the aftermath of Sunday’s race, clearly referring to his struggles with the Red Bull over the last two seasons. “Quite extreme changes, which shows that we were not in control. We were not fully understanding what to do.
“With Laurent having an engineering background, he’s asking the right questions to the engineers,” he continued, “common-sense questions. So I think that works really well.
“Plus, you try to understand from the things that you have tried, that at one point some things give you a bit of an idea of a direction, and that’s what we kept on working on.
“I definitely felt that in Zandvoort already we took a step that seemed to work quite well,” he added, “and then here another step which felt again a little bit better.”
With attention now almost fully on 2026, Helmut Marko confirms that there have been no radical changes to the car, the Austrian claiming that the difference is in the team’s preparation for each event.
“The difference is that the preparation of a weekend is a different one now,” he said, according to Motorsport.com. “Laurent is an excellent engineer, so now the idea is more to take whatever the simulation shows us, but mix that with the experience that Max has and with the experience that our engineers have. That’s how we want to make a car that is more predictable and drivable.
“This is the product of that,” he added. “Basically, it’s the same product as we had before, just some upgrades were coming and they are working.
“But 20 seconds on McLaren, I wouldn’t have predicted that!”
Fresh from his Monza masterclass, Verstappen heads to the Nurburgring this weekend to participate in a round of the Nurburgring Endurance Series (NLS).
Echoing those days in the 60s and 70s when F1 drivers could be found racing almost every weekend, be it F2, Sports Cars, Touring Cars or whatever, Verstappen has been given permission by his team to take part.
“At a time when our Formula 1 car wasn’t running properly, he was there with great enthusiasm,” says Marko, who approved the Dutchman’s extra-curricular racing activities. “It was an important distraction for his well-being.”
However, for the four-time world champion it won’t be a case of ‘arrive and drive’.
On arrival, after attending an initial classroom session on Friday, he will sit an exam in order to get his DMSB Permit Nordschleife.
Assuming he passes, on Saturday he will drive a Porsche Cayman GT4 CS run by Lionspeed in order to complete the necessary laps for his entry-level B Permit, after which he progresses to the A Permit, at which point he gets his hands on the Emil Frey Racing Ferrari 296 GT3 on Sunday.
Earlier this year, it was revealed that Verstappen – using the name Franz Hermann – had set an unofficial lap record on the notorious Nordschleife in a GT car.
No doubt, as the Dutchman goes head-to-head with NLS regulars keen to take him down a peg or two, some of his rivals will be found on social media selling ice cream and T-Shirts or sharing details of their dog’s latest adventures.
