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Today’s team representatives press conference with Laurent Mekies, Andrew Shovlin and Ayao Komatsu.
Laurent, if I could start with you, there has been so much focus on Liam and Yuki in the build-up to this race. So can we start by talking about them, and Liam, first of all. What kind of a driver has rejoined your team this weekend?Laurent Mekies: Look, Liam is in a good place. He’s in good spirits. I’m not going to tell you that he was happy about the news last week because certainly it was difficult to digest, but honestly, the next day he was with us in Faenza doing the seat fit. The day after he was back in the sim and here we are in Japan, so it’s good. He knows he has an important role to play with us in the battle we have in the midfield. He has a point to prove out there. We are all very conscious that his talent is there and it’s about finding the right conditions to extract it back out of him.
You say he has a point to prove. You know what he’s capable of and you’ve worked with him for more than 12 months. Were you surprised by his two outings with Red Bull this year?LM: I think we were all surprised. Of course, I think nobody was expecting that he would be back of the grid for these two races. It was certainly a very tricky set of circumstances, but to tell you that any of us would have anticipated that would be a lie. That being said, with high confidence, we think that his talent did not disappear and we start back these adventures where we left it last year.
Can we quickly talk about Yuki as well? As you’ve told us many times how good he is, do you think he’s ready for this promotion to Red Bull Racing?LM: Yes, for sure he’s ready. As you said, we had these questions here many times in the past and we kept repeating that Yuki has made an incredible step last year compared to his previous seasons. We really felt that if he was going to make another step in 2025, we would be talking about a very serious level — and that’s exactly what he has done. So, credit to him. He also had the bad news at the end of last season. He went to Japan, he came back in very strong spirit. As soon as he joined us back in Faenza and in Milton Keynes in January, he worked extremely hard. The spirit was there, the attention to all the details was there. When he jumped in the car in Bahrain, he showed pretty much straight away to us that he had made another step.
Final one for me. Let’s bring it on to your car now. You’ve had a very fast racing car so far this year. What is it capable of this weekend at Suzuka?LM: You know, we take nothing for granted now. The car was fast in Melbourne and in China, which is a good sign. But equally, the pack is very tight behind the first four top teams. Between P5 and P10 in the Constructors’ Championship, it’s extremely tight. So we think we will be in that fight again this weekend. Whether we have enough to lead the pack, at least as we did in qualifying in Melbourne and in Shanghai, it’s too early to say. So we take it step by step. We have to fight our way up to that midfield every race weekend. Let’s see where it takes us. At this very moment, we are lacking in transforming this pace into points, so we are trying to get a smooth weekend.
Andrew, if we could come to you now. Encouraging start for Racing Bulls this year, also for Mercedes. Just how encouraged are you?Andrew Shovlin: Well, it’s been a lot calmer than the last few years, mainly because the car is what we intended it to be. It hasn’t really got the vices that we’ve had in a couple of previous years and that’s down to doing good work over the winter. Good work last year to try and understand the problems. So far, we haven’t seen many circuits, but it’s worked well over the ones we have and through a range of conditions. So it’s good. There’s clearly a gap to McLaren that we need to chip away at, but that looks more like just a normal development race that we need to get stuck into rather than trying to get on top of any of the handling vices that we’ve had.
As you say, a sample of two so far this year. When we go back to Japan last year, it wasn’t such an easy race for the team. Do you see Suzuka this weekend as a bit of a litmus test?AS: I wouldn’t say it’s a litmus test in that sense. In some ways, I think Bahrain will be more interesting because there you’ve got a rear overheating circuit and that was one of the things we really struggled with. It’s another circuit. From P1, the car looks to be working OK. You’d also say that McLaren looked like the ones to beat. But, you know, the weekend started OK and we’ll see how it goes over the next few sessions.
Andrew, can we talk about drivers? Toto has been full of praise for George Russell after the last outing in China. In what areas do you see that he’s stepped up this year?AS: Certainly within the team, he’s very calm. He seems very confident. He’s done a great job in the first two races, so that’s been really encouraging. He just seems to be very relaxed in his position in the team now and he’s just going about getting the points, trying to qualify as well as he can. Front row in China was very encouraging. He’s pushing us hard to improve and he’s doing a lot of work himself.
What about the debutant, Kimi Antonelli? Have you been impressed by everything he’s done?AS: Yeah. We did a lot of work with the old cars with Kimi, trying to get him used to driving a Formula 1 car. We were trying to do that in a relatively short space of time. From the first time we put him in an F1 car, you could see he was going to be a decent F1 driver and we had high expectations. If you look at how he performed in that wet race in Melbourne, that was quite exceptional for someone in their first race. And while we did a lot of mileage with him in the TPC testing, he’s not running with other cars, so this is the first opportunity you can put him in those racing situations. He was unlucky that he had damage to his car in Melbourne Qualy. Unlucky that he had damage on lap one in the race in China. But from what we’ve seen, really impressed and reassuring that he’s only going to get better from where he is already.
Thank you for that. Ayao, thank you for waiting. We’ve been talking about drivers, so why don’t we continue that theme. Ollie Bearman first of all. How impressed were you with the way he bounced back after the disappointment of Melbourne?Ayo Komatsu: Very impressed. But that’s already what we knew. We knew he was capable of that. Melbourne was a bit of a surprise to us, but we believed in his ability. We had a decent conversation in Melbourne and also before we started running in Shanghai. We basically said: “Look, you’ve got the talent, you’ve got everything you need to perform, you just have to do every single lap we plan to do this weekend.” Which is exactly what he’s done. He chipped away on every single step and learned every single run and then the performance on Sunday was amazing. That’s the Ollie we know. Like Kimi, he’s got a lot more potential and growth to offer, so really enjoy working with him.
What about Esteban Ocon? Only a sample of two races. What do you feel he’s bringing to the team?AK: Really, again, his work ethic. We know he’s quick. He’s a proven quantity. He’s a race finisher, scored so many points, but he’s still very young and very determined for more success in Formula 1. He’s someone that we can grow together with. Especially when we have a car problem like we had in Melbourne, to have a driver like that fully integrated into the team, driving the engineers — doesn’t matter how much time he needs to spend with them — he’s really eager to improve it together. That makes a huge difference for the team. So that’s what I expected and that’s exactly what we are seeing. Very pleased about that.
What about the performance of the car? It has been a bit of a roller coaster season for the team. How do you explain that?AK: Oh yeah, I think some other top teams already had this issue in previous years, but we are managing it OK. Last year we thought we had a good process and metrics to make sure we don’t go into that kind of issue. But then this year again… We didn’t see it in Bahrain, it’s just purely because of the type of corners. We saw snippets of it, but we didn’t understand the severity. As soon as we started running in Melbourne, it was pretty apparent. But the good thing was everybody accepted it and said: ‘right, we’ve got a big issue we need to solve’. Then we got on with it, trying to understand where we started diverging from making sure we don’t go into that kind of problem and then we wanted to bring something here. So yeah, that was a big issue. Still a big issue. I wouldn’t say we solved it. Here this morning in FP1, we didn’t see that issue, but it’s not to say we solved it. So it’s still a long road ahead.
Questions From The Floor
(Luke Smith – The Athletic) Andrew, to follow up on Tom’s question about George — obviously this year he’s the experienced driver in the team. Have you seen any change in terms of his approach now he’s sort of team leader, after Lewis has left? Or is it more just the case of building on what you’ve seen through his last few years?AS: It’s inevitably going to change when you’ve got an experienced driver like George and then a rookie like Kimi. So those two are working together, and George is trying to give him the benefit of his experience. I would say that George has stepped up into that role — being the team’s most experienced driver now. We always knew he was quick, but in his own approach, he has brought a confidence and a calmness this year that’s working very well for us. You look at that race in Melbourne — George was communicating really well with us as to what the weather was doing and what he was feeling in the car. We were using a lot of that information to copy the strategy onto Kimi’s side because, for Kimi, a lot of it was new. But it’s really pleasing to see how the two of them are working together, and how George has stepped up into that role.
Check out our Friday gallery from Suzuka here.
