Mekies on ‘difficult’ Red Bull weekend after Verstappen crash

Here's the thing about racing at Zandvoort: it leaves nowhere to hide. Red Bull Team Principal Laurent Mekies made no secrets about it, conceding that the Dutch Grand Prix was a very difficult weekend for the squad after taking what he described as a step back.

The afternoon started with promise as Max Verstappen and Liam Lawson lined up seventh and eighth on the grid respectively. The pair even enjoyed a brief wheel-to-wheel battle when the lights went out. Unfortunately, that was as good as it got for the home hero. Verstappen's final home race at Zandvoort ended within a couple of laps when he lost the rear of his car coming out of Turn 14 and hit the wall.

Thankfully, the massive shunt left the Dutchman unharmed, though the incident brought out a red flag to clear the debris. Mekies admitted we will never know what Verstappen's true race pace might have been, noting that the preceding days had already exposed the team's struggles. Session after session, the machine simply looked more difficult to handle than it had in Budapest, Spa, or Austria.

With the reigning champion out, Liam Lawson shouldered the burden for the Milton Keynes-based outfit. The 24-year-old was stepping in as a substitute for an injured Isack Hadjar. Despite picking up a 10-second time penalty for a yellow flag infringement, Lawson delivered a solid drive to secure seventh place on a day when the team simply lacked the pace to fight the top three outfits ahead.

Mekies had high praise for the stand-in driver, pointing out that Lawson had finished only one tenth away from Verstappen in qualifying before collecting the available points in the race. Isack Hadjar also spent the weekend embedded with the team despite being unable to drive, soaking up the learning to keep the group united. Now, Red Bull faces two weeks of hard work to regroup and figure out whether rivals simply out-upgraded them or if something capped their performance before fighting back at Monza.

“A difficult weekend here in Zandvoort,” Mekies explained. “First of all, I think the most important thing is that Max is okay. It was a pretty big shunt and we are all glad to see that he's out of the car, unharmed and that's what matters the most today.”