Zak Brown thinks Red Bull face the ‘same’ talent issue McLaren had before they won recent F1 titles

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McLaren CEO Zak Brown claims he would be “foolish” to write Red Bull off after their dreary start to the 2026 F1 season, as Laurent Mekies can turn their fortunes around.

Red Bull are just sixth in the F1 constructors’ standings after the first four rounds of the year, with even Haas and Alpine above the Milton Keynes team. While Red Bull almost reaped the rewards for continuing to develop the RB21 in 2025, they have paid the price with the RB22.

Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar have lamented the RB22’s chronic balance problems, with Red Bull’s car prone to understeer on turn-in then oversteer under acceleration. Verstappen called his Red Bull “undriveable” in Japan, where Hadjar even said their chassis is “terrible”.

Verstappen has also yet to finish a Grand Prix higher than his P6 in Australia, and Hadjar got his best result as a Red Bull driver so far with P8 in China. Yet McLaren CEO Brown does not doubt that Red Bull team principal Mekies can turn his outfit’s fortunes around this season.

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Zak Brown thinks Red Bull need to ‘reset’ their pit wall under Laurent Mekies like McLaren did

Brown believes “it would be very foolish to write Red Bull off” after only three rounds, with 19 rounds still to go this year, in what is also the first season under the 2026 F1 regulations. He also feels Mekies only has to “reset” Red Bull after their recent spate of big-name exits.

READ MORE: Every key Red Bull staff departure, including Gianpiero Lambiase to McLaren

Gianpiero Lambiase will leave Red Bull for McLaren no later than 2028 after agreeing to join the Woking outfit as their chief racing officer. He follows Adrian Newey, Jonathan Wheatley, Rob Marshall and many more in choosing to leave Red Bull, who also fired Christian Horner.

Given Red Bull’s high-profile departures, Brown feels Mekies now has to “reset” their set-up in the same way that McLaren did to build a title-winning team. McLaren won the 2024 and 2025 constructors’ titles and the 2025 drivers’ title with Lando Norris after Brown appointed Andrea Stella as their team principal, along with hiring Marshall as part of his team’s rebuild.

Brown said, via quotes by Motorsport.com: “They have to kind of do a little bit of a reset. They lost a lot of people – Christian, Wheatley, GP eventually, Newey.

“So much what I came into, which was a different situation because they were very competitive, but the majority of the pit wall has changed.

“I rate Laurent, I think he does a very good job. He’s technical, he’s young and he’s got to rebuild the people that he lost and rebuild the team.

“I have no doubt he will. And much like McLaren had an immense amount of talent that just needed to be unlocked, I think that’s probably the same as Red Bull.

“They’ve been very dominant up to not very long ago, so there’s a lot of talent in there, and I think he’ll just need to get it redirected.”

Laurent Mekies claims Red Bull have hired ‘more than 400’ new staff in the last nine months

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Red Bull have already been very active under Mekies in trying to replace the personnel that they have lost in recent months, along with improving their depth at their factory in Milton Keynes. Mekies replaced Horner as Red Bull’s team principal and F1 CEO in July last year.

Mekies has now revealed that Red Bull have hired “more than 400 people” in the past nine months. He has also noted that Verstappen attended Red Bull’s formal factory greeting last week for 120 of their new hires, which is a standard event for those hired during a quarter.

“He was there when we welcomed the 120 people, and I think in the last nine months we hired more than 400 people,” Mekies said, via The Race.

“We monitor very precisely the flows in and out to our colleagues at the top teams. The best luck we have is the amount of talent we have, and the constant dynamic environment that makes them rise. And that’s where we need to focus, where we decide to focus.”