‘Zero contribution’: Mekies deflects credit as Verstappen ends Red Bull drought with clinical Monza win
If Max Verstappen was the cold blade at Monza, Laurent Mekies insists he wasn’t the hand on the hilt.
Red Bull’s new team principal watched his driver turn a tricky Italian Grand Prix into a commanding 19-second win over McLaren, then shrugged at any suggestion he’d masterminded it. “The level of contribution is zero,” he said, deadpan. “I’m not joking either. It’s 1500 people working on making that car faster… Our only role is to make sure the talents we have are put in the right conditions to express the talent as best they can.”
It’s Mekies’ first victory as Red Bull boss since replacing Christian Horner after Silverstone, and the team’s first since Imola. Verstappen, back on the top step for the first time since the early-summer round at Imola, made it look easy by the flag, but the race had teeth.
From a surprise pole, Verstappen ceded the lead early after cutting the second chicane in his duel with Lando Norris and giving the position back. That could’ve been the cue for another long McLaren afternoon. Instead, Verstappen latched on, bided his time, and swept around the outside into Turn 1. From there he just eased away, lap by lap, while McLaren sat on a one-stop that depended on a Safety Car that never bothered to show.
For a team that’s spent much of the year chasing its tail on setup, the Monza weekend felt… orderly. Verstappen credited Mekies’ engineering eye for that shift. “Up until now we were just shooting left and right a little bit with the set-up,” he said. “With Laurent having an engineering background, he’s asking the right questions – common-sense questions – so I think that works really well. I felt in Zandvoort already we took a step, and here another step which felt again a little bit better.”
Helmut Marko didn’t try to hide the grin. “The preparation is a different one – Laurent is an excellent engineer,” he said. “It’s more based on data or whatever than what the simulation is showing you. Mix it with the experience like Max has, and make a car which is predictable and driveable – that’s the result. Some updates were coming and they were working, but 20 seconds on McLaren? I wouldn’t have predicted that.”
Pierre Wache, Red Bull’s technical director, added one important Friday footnote: Verstappen pushed the team toward less rear wing against initial instincts. “He gave us a different direction of setup that, already in Zandvoort, we found, and now we optimised around it,” Wache said. “We will see if it works for different races.”
That’s the question. McLaren have been the class of the field for much of the campaign and Red Bull’s formline has been scratchy. Monza, with its slipstream quirks and low-drag trade-offs, is always an outlier. Mekies knows it. “Again, it’s a Monza-specific layout, blah, blah, blah,” he smiled, tipping his cap to the factory. “When things are not working the way you would like… you question everything. What is great in the team is that they kept an open mind and did it in a very constructive way.”
Beyond the match-up with Norris and the tyre offset that never materialised under yellows, the most encouraging sign for Red Bull was feel. “Predictable and driveable,” to use Marko’s phrase, is exactly what Verstappen needs to do Verstappen things. If Zandvoort was the first breadcrumb and Monza the second, Red Bull may finally have a path out of the woods that consumed their summer.
As a result, the championship picture shifts slightly. Red Bull’s win drought is over, Verstappen’s total rises to two from the opening seven rounds, and the gap trims to 94 points with eight race weekends left, three of them Sprints. A title charge remains a long shot on the numbers, but the mood music has changed.
Just don’t try to pin a headline on Mekies. He won’t wear it. “The extent of the contribution, that’s it. Nothing more,” he said of his role, pointing back toward Milton Keynes. And maybe that’s the tell. The team principal preaching environment over ego. The driver calling his shots on setup. The car finally behaving.
Monza might not be a blueprint. But it looked a lot like a reset.
