- Red Bull Racing faces early-season pressure after a difficult weekend in China
- Team leadership signals urgency while keeping focus on quick recovery
- Japan emerges as the first key test of progress
Red Bull Racing boss Laurent Mekies says the team can recover at the next race in Japan after a painful outing at the Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai.
The team scored just four points, all from Isack Hadjar’s eighth-place finish. Mekies spoke through Max Verstappen’s official news website. He admitted the team faced serious problems but said lessons learned could help them improve quickly.
A weekend that went wrong from the start
Mekies said the weekend was “very tough from Friday onwards.” The Sprint format gave the team little time to fix issues once they fell behind. He noted that starting on the back foot in such a format is the worst case.
Red Bull came to Shanghai already under pressure after Melbourne. Mekies said reaching the grid in Australia with their own power unit was a big step, but problems were expected. Those concerns carried into China and grew worse.
“We knew that just getting onto the grid in Melbourne with our own PU was a major achievement in itself, and it would have been naïve not to expect we would encounter reliability issues,” Mekies said.
Verstappen’s race ended early on lap 45 due to an energy recovery system coolant failure. The team retired the car to avoid more damage. He had already struggled in the Sprint, calling it a disaster due to poor starts and heavy tyre wear.
Performance problems run deeper than reliability
The ERS failure was not the only issue. Mekies said the car itself had clear weaknesses. Verstappen also said the RB22 never reached a good balance during the race.
Data showed Verstappen was about 1.7 seconds per lap slower than the race winner. The gap grew as tyre wear increased. The front-left tyre suffered the most.
Rear stability was another concern. On Sunday, Verstappen was seen making several steering corrections in fast corners. While straight-line speed matched Mercedes, the car lost time in corners due to weaker energy recovery performance.
Mekies said the gap to Mercedes had grown since Melbourne. He added that the deficit now comes more from the car than the power unit.
Mekies’ message: lessons learned, Japan next
Despite the result, Laurent Mekies kept his message steady. He said the team has learned a lot in the first races. He expects Red Bull Racing to be more competitive at the Japanese Grand Prix. He pointed to the group in Milton Keynes and said he trusts them to fix the current issues.
“We have learned so much over the past few weeks, and I expect that we can be more competitive from the next round in Japan in a fortnight’s time,” Mekies said via Verstappen’s official news site. “After that, the unfortunate but inevitable cancellation of the races in April will give all of us a chance to catch our breath and work as hard as always in Milton Keynes.”
“We have a great group of talented people on the campus, and I have full confidence that we will get through our current limitations thanks to a massive push from everyone and improve our package rapidly,” he added.
The tough weekend showed in other ways. Red Bull cancelled Mekies’ usual post-race media session as he left with Verstappen on his private jet with two other senior team figures: technical director Pierre Wache and race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase.
Their shared departure came soon after the race and drew attention in the paddock, as the team looked to respond quickly to its problems.
The road to recovery
Red Bull now faces a rare challenge early in the season. The team must fix both reliability and performance under new rules. Verstappen called the 2026 cars “terrible” and said racing has suffered.
Still, he said the team is working hard to improve. He stressed that progress will come from working together. The next race at Suzuka Circuit will test that progress on a fast and technical layout.
The weeks after Japan may matter even more. With extra time to develop the RB22, Red Bull hopes to close the gap and reset its season.
