04/08/2025 16:45
Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies has explained how the team raised the
alarm about its Hungarian Grand Prix from the "first lap in
practice." The final race before F1's summer break proved to be a
major letdown for Red Bull, with Max Verstappen qualifying only
eighth and then finishing in ninth as Yuki Tsunoda posted another
non-score from a pit-lane start. Verstappen was not a factor in any
of the crucial sessions and branded his RB21 as "undriveable" as he
laboured to ninth, behind Liam Lawson and ahead of Kimi Antonelli.
Post-race, Mekies explained that most of Red Bull's woes were due
to a lack of tyre temperature, with the alarm being raised from the
very start of the weekend. "Well, the honest answer is that if we
knew, we would have fixed it," Mekies told media, including
RacingNews365 , when asked why the team had struggled. "What I can
tell you is that it was there from the first lap in FP1, we looked
at each other and said: 'What is going on?' "We could see in all
the slow and medium speed corners that we were just very slow and
it was something that was not balance related. "We could not put
the car in the right window, we couldn't switch on the tyres, it
happens sometimes, but not to that magnitude, and it felt wrong
from the very beginning. "The good thing is that the guys went out
with both cars to try different things, but it didn't make any
difference; we couldn't switch on the tyres on long runs or short
runs. "Sometimes, you get it by luck or merit in the right window,
but it never happened, and it happened in qualifying. "It has been
a theme this year to say the window is quite narrow, and sometimes
very narrow, and [the weekend] was a lot more than that, and we
were unable to get the car [in the window.]"
