Mekies admits Red Bull "certainly missed something quite key this weekend "

F1 Grand Prix, GP Hungary, Hungaroring

Hot on the heels of an utterly disappointing weekend for Red Bull, freshly-signed team boss Laurent Mekies admitted that the Milton Keynes-based outfit "certainly missed something quite key this weekend."

Red Bull struggled for pace on the opening day of the Hungarian Grand Prix. While the Milton Keynes-based outfit often managed to turn the situation around come Saturday, Max Verstappen never look really competitive at the Hungaroring.

The Dutch driver qualified eighth on Saturday, but he immediately lost a place at the start of the race. Although he managed to regain the position, he got stuck behind an obdurate Gabriel Bortoleto.

Red Bull elected to call Verstappen in quite early to pursue an undercut manoeuvre, and he debated switching to a one-stop after rising to fifth. However, his early stop meant that he was unable to keep his tyre alive for so long, and had to stop for a second time. This late second stop dropped him down the order, and he was unable to work his way higher up than P9.

Following a tough qualifying session, his team-mate Yuki Tsunoda opted for a pit lane start, having received fresh power unit components. The Japanese driver spent most of his race caught in DRS trains, and he came home in a disappointing 17th place.

Reflecting on Red Bull's difficulties at the Hungaroring, freshly-singed team boss Laurent Mekies said: "It has been a very tough weekend from the first lap in FP1 and the race reflected this.

"We have certainly missed something quite key this weekend and looked at many things with both Yuki and Max, to try to get back to the level we had and get the car in the right window.

"The Team have tried everything, but the underlying performance was missing to be able to fight at the top end. The truth is we didn’t have the performance so when we pitted Max wasn’t ultimately going to be defining to the race result, we just did not have the lap time we needed in the car.

"Yuki was in a similar situation and starting from the pitlane meant he was never able to really make an impact on the field. What is important this weekend is that we have collected enough data to get out of similar situations in the future and make a positive step forward.

Signing off with a word for his plans for the coming races, Mekies stated: "These weekends are the ones you learn a lot from and that is what we will do.

"We will spend time reflecting during the break and we don’t underestimate the work ahead of us, we have many, many talented people in the Team to overcome this and we want to come back with a different level of performance after the summer break."