Red Bull Promises Verstappen Upgrade for Miami Round

Laurent Mekies has promised a performance upgrade for Max Verstappen at the Miami Grand Prix in May, but asks that no miracles be expected.

Mekies assured that Red Bull will bring an upgrade to the Miami Grand Prix, but tempered expectations by stating it won't be a drastic improvement.

Max Verstappen expressed his dissatisfaction with the current generation of Formula 1 cars and acknowledged considering retirement at the end of the 2026 season.

With Red Bull stuck in the middle of the standings and trailing behind Mercedes, McLaren, and Ferrari, significant improvements need to be made during the non-racing month.

Mekies stated, "I'm confident that we'll use this break to make a very good step forward."

"We need time to dive into our data, we need time to resimulate what we see in the data into the wind tunnel, into our simulator, try some sensitivities, and all of that we can do without racing.

"Does that mean you come to Miami and you've magically fixed everything? No, but again, I'm confident that the team will understand the core of the problem and start bringing upgrades from Miami onwards."

"That's what we'll see, but only the track and the lap times will give us an indication if we're going in the right direction."

However, considering the significant gap with the current leading teams, Mekies chose not to exaggerate the potential performance gain from any upgrade.

"I think we shouldn't expect miracles in terms of closing the gap because it's quite big, but what we want to see is having a car where our drivers can again push the car, measure the gap with the competitors in these conditions when we are able to push the car, and the rest will be pure development until the end of the year," he added.

"We certainly think that in China we had a setback and we measured it not only against the top teams but also against the midfield teams that are getting closer to us, so in China we definitely had a setback.

"I think it's not just because of the number of corners. There's a layer where at certain speed and cornering conditions we lose some performance compared to what our package should give us, so that's what we need to fix."

Despite Verstappen and Isack Hadjar finishing eighth and 12th in Suzuka, Mekies is confident Red Bull was "slightly better in Japan compared to China, especially in the race".

He said: "We didn't see it because we were again far back in fourth and it's not interesting for anyone to be far back in fourth.

"But the overall gap is what we've been talking about, around one second from the best driver and half a second from the best Ferrari maybe is where we are right now."