Laurent Mekies after the United States Grand Prix: 'Not fully satisfied'

Published on 26 October 2026 by Coen Versteeg

Laurent Mekies, CEO and team principal of Oracle Red Bull Racing, told after the United States Grand Prix: "It’s fair to say that, despite a 12th podium of the season with Max finishing third, we are leaving Austin not fully satisfied. We lost a bit of our edge today, and I don't think we had enough pace to fight with Kimi, who had a very strong race, so well done to him. Max’s car hit some debris around lap eight and picked up some damage. On top of that, we had a few issues that hurt the balance and, as a result, the pace dropped off, the degradation increased, and Max couldn't hang on to second place.It was a similar story for Isack, whose race was compromised by the start and then by a couple of problems during the race. Once again, the starts weren’t perfect, but the Team is working to make sure we have the tools to fix that in the future."

He continues: "A challenging Sunday, but we’ll take the podium knowing that we didn’t fully realize the potential of the car today, and we’ll take learnings from this weekend to come back stronger next week in Mexico. Despite all that, we have now moved up to third in the Constructors’ Championship, and Max is now only six points behind second place in the Drivers’ Championship."