Was Christian Horner’s departure key to Red Bull’s recovery?

According to Helmut Marko, the arrival of Laurent Mekies was key to the change of focus in Milton Keynes and from there came the momentum that put Max Verstappen in the fight for the crown after reaching 104 points behind Oscar Piastri.

Helmut Marko is the only important man left in the Red Bull structure since its inception, back in 2005. The dismemberment of the leadership began with the departure of Adrian Newey, the guru behind the design of the Austrian team’s winning cars, which was announced in May 2024. In July of this year came the bomb that imploded the structure: Christian Horner was fired from his position as director. His replacement came from the second team of energy drinks: Laurent Mekies left the position of head of Racing Bulls and took over at Red Bull.

The Frenchman landed at the Belgian GP and according to Marko, the team’s octogenarian advisor and the only one left of the iron trio, his arrival was the push that allowed Max Verstappen to return to the fight for the title, with five rounds left. The Dutchman’s victory in the United States (his third in the last five rounds) left him 40 points behind the leader, Oscar Piastri, when he reached 104 after the Netherlands GP.

“By the summer, Red Bull had already given up. But there was a change. Laurent managed to introduce a different approach to the technical setup and the general way of working. We no longer lack kilometers on Fridays in training. And suddenly, so did Max, after his victory at the Nürburgring (NdR: with a Ferrari GT3), he returned incredibly motivated. Honestly, over the summer, we had already given up. And now everyone is hungry again,” Marko said.

Mekies, the person responsible for the great uprising according to Marko, assured that the current attitude will be maintained to continue fighting: “I think there’s no reason why we shouldn’t take it the way we’ve done so far, race by race, trying to get the most out of it. Honestly, if we look back at this weekend, it wasn’t race by race, it was season by season, with that intensity, that focus, and it’s working.”

The other side is McLaren. They went from total dominance of making internal bets to see which of their two drivers would win the crown, to seeing Verstappen’s figure getting bigger and bigger and doing finite calculations. “That’s what Formula 1 is about. It was unusual when we had certain differences before; “This is normal in Formula 1,” Andrea Stella, director of the Woking team, tried to minimize.. “It’s difficult to compete against Red Bull, against Max Verstappen. So it’s a privilege to be there, we have the rhythm to be there. It’s about execution, believing in it, and we believe. We never want to lose the joy of doing it. Tension is part of the game,” he concluded.