F1 | Red Bull: Super Max wins thanks to a new way of working in the team
Max Verstappen’s victory in the Italian Grand Prix was down not only to the qualities of the four-time world champion but also to Red Bull’s new working methods. Helmut Marko was keen to give credit to team principal Laurent Mekies, who has modified internal processes and made the system more efficient. The RB21, running with an ultra low-downforce setup, delivered excellent results thanks to the greater involvement of Max himself.
Whenever Max Verstappen celebrates a win as he did at Monza, it means he feels he has achieved something special. For Red Bull, the Italian Grand Prix represented a chance to reassert themselves after playing a secondary role in recent races. But no one—inside or outside the team—expected to cross the finish line at Monza with a twenty-second margin over the McLaren duo. The past did not suggest such an outcome either: last year Verstappen had only managed sixth place at Monza, over thirty seconds behind race winner Charles Leclerc.
It is legitimate to ask what has changed, and Helmut Marko did not mince words when explaining how the team achieved their third win of the season. “The difference? We changed our preparation work. Laurent (Mekies) is an excellent engineer. Now we don’t just accept what the simulations show us blindly—we compare, discuss, and combine it with Max’s experience and the feedback from our trackside group. We were sure we had a car with good drivability. The team worked well all weekend, and the updates we brought to the track delivered what we expected. That said, I certainly didn’t expect us to finish twenty seconds ahead of McLaren.”
Clearly, Red Bull’s Monza-focused preparation was excellent, but Marko insisted the success went beyond simply running a perfectly balanced low-downforce package. “In Budapest we knew what we had done wrong,” Helmut Marko continued, “but unfortunately it was too late to correct it. At Zandvoort we showed we were moving in the right direction, even though it wasn’t a track where we had great expectations. And here in Monza, you saw the results.”
Marko, like the entire Red Bull team, was quick to underline Verstappen’s decisive role throughout the weekend. His race management was flawless, his lap times consistent, but there was more than that. “If you have a fast and experienced driver like Max, it’s important to listen to what he has to say,” Marko stressed. “Recently, he has had a stronger voice in our decisions, and I think that’s the right path. After all, he’s the one in the car. This weekend he realized it was crucial to improve our straight-line speed, and the team reacted very well, recognizing his contribution.”
The supremacy of the Verstappen-Red Bull combination was acknowledged even by McLaren. “Today Verstappen was faster,” admitted team principal Andrea Stella. “He managed to overtake Lando and pulled away.”
At McLaren, they hoped that the blistering pace Verstappen showed in the opening ten laps would trigger tyre wear in the second half of the stint. That hope never materialized, as Verstappen managed to complete 37 of the 53 laps on the opening set of medium tyres with no obvious performance drop. It was a show of strength that will certainly influence the predictions for the next round in Baku.
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