Mekies admits Verstappen 'right not to be happy' over issue that caused Silverstone crash

Laurent Mekies has conceded Max Verstappen was "right not to be happy" after the four-time World Champion span out into the Stowe corner gravel trap four laps from the end of the British Grand Prix

The incident left the driver less than pleased given it came just a week after his huge crash in Q3 in Austria, and at the end of a weekend when he’d been constantly frustrated by both power unit and handling problems. However, he had still managed to run in P3 until his late crash.

Both incidents were seemingly caused by the rear wing failing to reattach properly at the end of a Straight Mode zone, although the exact cause was different in each case.

Verstappen made his feelings about the RB22 clear on team radio as he sat in the car, and he didn’t hold back after the race.

“When the rear wing doesn’t close fully, you lose a lot of downforce and you spin off the track," he said afterwards. "So, yeah. One time, okay, but two times… This is becoming dangerous for myself. And obviously, I don’t want that.”

It was also painful for all at the Red Bull team to hear such strong words, but Team Principal Laurent Mekies understood why Verstappen was so frustrated.

“Look, he's right not to be happy,” said the Frenchman after the race. “It is very unpleasant for drivers to be let down by the car in high-speed corners in two consecutive races, let it be for two different reasons. And it is, in a much lower scale, also extremely unpleasant for us as a group to send our drivers to the gravel trap.

“So he's right to be unhappy. I have no doubt that, as a team, we will put in place what is necessary for that not to happen again, even if we failed to do that today. And we take that as seriously as one can do, and therefore the minimum that Max can feel today is being unhappy.”

The frustration for Mekies and his team was that they had identified what went wrong in Austria, and a different issue arose at Silverstone.

"We certainly understand what happened at the Red Bull Ring,” Mekies explained. “We are not going to go into the details, because I don't think it will be right. But we understand the failure, yes.

“From the early analysis of today, we have suffered a different type of failure. It doesn't make it better, but it is clear that, in front of the succession of events, whether or not the failure is different, that doesn't really matter.

“We are going to review the full area to make sure we leave zero chance for that to happen again.”

For the past five races Red Bull has used its version of the “Macarena” or “upside-down” rear wing, an idea pioneered by Ferrari in pre-season testing, and also being pursued more recently by McLaren.

Asked if that choice would now be reviewed, Mekies said: “We will do whatever is necessary to be on the safe side. We have raced quite a few races with that concept – we have raced it since Miami, I think. So it's been a number of races.

“It's too early in the analysis to establish whether it's an issue with the concept, or something else. But we are going for sure to leave no stone unturned when it comes to it, and we have all the options open.”

The Stowe incident aside, Verstappen also highlighted the fact that he had wanted to drop out of parc ferme after Qualifying, take a fresh power unit and change the set-up of the RB22, so unhappy was he with the handling during the weekend.

Such tactics are not unusual for drivers who are near the back of the grid or who are out of position after issues in Qualifying. However giving up a P7 spot would have been costly, as Mekies outlined.

“After Qualifying, it was clear we were not very happy with the balance of the car, to say the least,” he said.

“Whilst we knew it wasn't going to be pleasant to go with a very imperfect balance into the race, we still felt that it will give us a better result than starting from the pit lane with perhaps something better.

“Now, it's something we have discussed with Max, and I completely accept that he may have a different feeling, and he's driving the car, so that's what it is. In the end of the day, there were important learnings today.

“To his point, the car probably felt similar to what he had yesterday, so we hit the limitations that we knew we had yesterday. I'm not completely sure that we could have been P3 on the road before the failure happened if we had started from the pit lane.”