Crimson Bull group boss Laurent Mekies has acknowledged his Formulation 1 group’s struggles couldn’t be mounted just by copying components of a extra constant Racing Bulls automobile.
Racing Bulls drivers have carried out a lot better than the second Crimson Bull driver – whatever the latter being Liam Lawson or Yuki Tsunoda – over the 2025 season to this point, accumulating no fewer than 45 factors when Lawson obtained none in two rounds at Crimson Bull whereas Tsunoda solely scored seven in 12 grands prix.
The second Crimson Bull was outqualified by not less than one Racing Bulls on 9 events (dash qualifying not included), with even Max Verstappen 0.003s slower than Lawson in Austria.
Crimson Bull endured considered one of its worst weekends in current occasions final weekend on the Hungarian Grand Prix. Verstappen certified down in eighth, simply forward of the Racing Bulls, and struggled to ninth place behind Lawson on Sunday.
Following the qualifying session on Saturday, Sky Sports activities F1 requested Mekies if Crimson Bull might take issues from the Racing Bulls automobile to search out extra efficiency with the RB21 – an concept he dominated out.
“No, I feel the query is honest, however there is a genesis of the automobile,” the Frenchman defined. “The place the automobiles are coming from is just too completely different for anybody to switch something from a automobile to a different. It is what Formulation 1 is right this moment.
“You already know, it is 10 impartial groups all coming with their very own concepts about the place to develop the automobile, what difficulties they discovered alongside the way in which, which improvement paths they’ve ended up having on account of that. And there’s nothing you possibly can take from a automobile to a different. It is actually all the way down to the way it was developed from early on.”
Laurent Mekies, Crimson Bull Racing Workforce Principal
Picture by: Crimson Bull Content material Pool
Mekies mentioned Verstappen’s huge expertise was “important” in such powerful occasions, with the four-time world champion having raced at Crimson Bull for the previous 9 years, making them the third-longest F1 partnership behind Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes and Michael Schumacher at Ferrari.
“It is an enormous benefit as a result of he is aware of when the automobile has been working. He is aware of when the automobile has not been working,” Mekies mentioned.
“And particularly in a state of affairs like that the place it isn’t a lot a stability challenge, it is actually like we’re struggling to search out the extent of grip we must be having right here. And he is definitely been an enormous, large assist in these conditions.”
Mekies additionally admitted to “experimenting” unsuccessfully over the weekend on the Hungaroring, failing to discover a answer to the RB21’s lack of grip.
“What I can inform you is that it was there from the primary lap in FP1,” he mentioned in his post-race media session. “We have a look at one another and we are saying, what is going on on?
“We might see in all of the slow-speed, medium-speed [corners], we’re simply very gradual. It was one thing, we could not say that it was balance-related.
Max Verstappen, Crimson Bull Racing, Yuki Tsunoda, Crimson Bull Racing
Picture by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Photographs through Getty Photographs
“We felt that we could not put the automobile in the appropriate window, we could not change on the tyres. Generally it occurs in FP1, however not in that magnitude. It felt improper from the start and we tried very many issues.
“The great factor is that the blokes actually went out and tried with each automobiles various things. It did not do any distinction, we could not change on the tyres. Future, brief run, typically it makes you get – by luck or by advantage – in the appropriate window, but it surely by no means fairly occurred. And it was like that in qualifying.
“After all, you possibly can at all times have a look at your finest pattern and suppose that this was really alright. However the fact is, on common, it by no means fairly got here again. I feel it has been a theme this 12 months to say that the window is slim – and typically very slim. I feel right this moment was much more than that. Right now we had been actually unable to get the automobile to run.”
Further reporting by Ronald Vording
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