Laurent Mekies’ ‘zero contribution’ claim as Max Verstappen Italian GP approach revealed

Laurent Mekies believes he, as Red Bull team boss, played “zero” part in Max Verstappen’s victory in the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

Verstappen returned to the top step of the podium at Monza for the first time since the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at the start of summer, marking Laurent Mekies’ first Grand Prix win as team principal of the Milton Keynes-based squad since succeeding the axed Christian Horner after Silverstone.

Laurent Mekies: My level of contribution is ‘zero’

Having taken a surprise pole position on Saturday, Verstappen lost the lead of the race to McLaren’s Lando Norris when he ceded position after holding onto the lead by cutting the second corner while battling the British driver.

But the Dutch driver, unlike the state of play for most of the summer, kept in touch with Norris and overtook the McLaren around the outside into Turn 1 and, from there, simply pulled away bit by bit with a small but comfortable pace advantage over his 2024 title rival.

Given a straightforward one-stop strategy, McLaren rolled the dice on a Safety Car intervention that never came, exaggerating Verstappen’s superiority somewhat as the Red Bull ended up coming home 19 seconds in the lead.

Afterwards, Verstappen spoke about how he felt Laurent Mekies had played a direct part in this victory, saying that the French engineer had been asking all the right questions of the engineers, with the setup direction less reliant on the findings in the simulator than usual.

“Up until now we’ve had a lot of races where we were just shooting left and right a little bit with the set-up of the car,” he said.

“Quite extreme changes, which shows that we were not in control. We were not fully understanding what to do.

“With Laurent having an engineering background, he’s asking the right questions to the engineers – common-sense questions – so I think that works really well.

“Plus, you try to understand from the things that you have tried, that at one point some things give you a bit of an idea of a direction, and that’s what we kept on working on.

“I definitely felt that in Zandvoort already we took a step that seemed to work quite well, and then here another step which felt again a little bit better.”

But Mekies was keen to play down this praise. When asked by PlanetF1.com to assess his own level of contribution as an engineer to Red Bull‘s first Grand Prix win since Imola, he was firm in his answer as he distanced himself from the suggestion.

“The answer is a very easy one. The level of contribution is zero,” he bluntly said.

“And I’m not joking either. It’s 1500 people working on making that car faster.

“So these are the addition of this talent that makes the car faster, that makes the hundredths and makes the thousandths, makes the setup options available and makes a new component available. So the short answer is zero.

“Our only role is to make sure that the talents we have are put in the right conditions to express the talent as best they can.

“That’s the only thing we are doing. That’s the extent of the contribution, and that’s it. Nothing more.”

Helmut Marko: Laurent Mekies is an ‘excellent engineer’

While the self-effacing Mekies may have been eager to downplay his involvement in the win, Helmut Marko was full of praise for the Frenchman, saying, “The difference [here] is that the preparation is a different one – Laurent is an excellent engineer.

“So it’s more based on data or whatever than what the simulation is showing you.

“But mix it with the experience like Max has, or the experience our racing engineers have, make a car which is predictable and driveable – that’s the [result].

“Okay, some updates were coming and they were working but, 20 seconds on McLaren, I wouldn’t have predicted that.”

Red Bull technical director Pierre Wache spoke about how Verstappen had stood firm on a setup direction on Friday, insisting on running less rear wing than what some of the engineers had suggested.

“[Max] gave us a different direction of setup that, already in Zandvoort, we found it, and now we optimised around it,” he said, “and I think we will see if it works for different races.”

With two wins in the first seven races for Verstappen, it’s been nine Grands Prix without a Red Bull victory.

Verstappen’s win reduces the points gap to 94 points with eight race weekends to go, including three Sprints. The Drivers’ Championship is thus still highly unlikely, even if Red Bull can repeat such performances at more events in the final third of the season.

For Mekies, celebrating his first win as a team boss, Monza’s effort has marked a high point in what he believes has been a tough campaign for the squad as it struggled for consistent results in the face of a dominant McLaren.

“In this sort of moment, you think of the team back in Milton Keynes about the tough start of the season,” he said.

“When things are not working the way you would like them to work, you know when you are missing that ultimate pace, you question everything. That’s the way we are.

“That’s the way the competition is. You question everything. What is great in the team is that they kept an open mind.

“They did question everything in a very constructive way. It’s a lot of hard work, and you don’t always get, supposedly, feedback from the tracks as what we got today.

“So, the results are very much with everyone in Milton Keynes that have been pushing so hard not to give up.

“Again, it’s a Monza-specific layout, blah, blah, blah, but it’s very much giving them back the credit of many weeks, many months of hard work.”

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