Mekies: Being able to fight for win in Singapore means a lot

Mekies seems to have calmed the internal unrest at Red Bull Racing ever since he replaced Christian Horner, while the team appear to be on an upward trend performance-wise with their RB21, with Verstappen winning from pole, both in Monza and Baku.

However, the real test for the RB21 was Singapore, a venue where Red Bull Racing have struggled historically, even in their most dominant season, the 2023 Formula 1 season, when they won all but the 2023 Singapore Grand Prix.

Verstappen may have missed out on pole and finished second last weekend, but he was in contention from day one around the Marina Bay Circuit, and while he blamed Lando Norris for driving slowly for missing out on a chance of taking pole, the Dutchman suffered from car issues that meant he was on the defense against the Briton instead of attacking George Russell, who won the race from pole.

While a third consecutive win for Verstappen did not materialize, Mekies took comfort in the performance the reigning F1 Champion delivered in the improved RB21.

"Being able to fight for the win here, it means a lot," Mekies said. "After Monza, Baku, it was very different. You never know until you are coming.

"We've been able to be in the right rhythms from Friday. We were in the right rhythm in Qualifying. It was very, very close to call, and we were in the right rhythm in the race.

"If you look, we finished a few seconds away from George. This is good news. It means that what we have unlocked is not only low-downforce specific.

"We will not change our approach. We'll continue to take it race by race. We'll continue to take the learnings," the Frenchman vowed.

Mekies has refused to take any credit for any of the improvement the Milton Keynes squad has enjoyed, and made sure to point out the hard work the team have been doing behind the scenes.

He added: "I think everybody has been working extremely hard in Milton Keynes, from race one to now, and never giving up on trying to unlock the potential of that car. It is fair to say that the progress in the last few weeks have been quite spectacular.

"And it's credit to everyone, again, back at home, that have never given up. It's credit to Max, that has been, with his sensitivity, pushing us to explore different avenues. And finally, we found an avenue that unlocked a bit of performance.

"There is no single silver bullet. So, there have been a good flow of updates. There have been different ways to run the car," Mekies concluded.

Verstappen is now 63 points behind McLaren's Oscar Piastri, who leads the 2025 F1 Drivers' Championship from teammate Norris by 22 points with six Grands Prix and three Sprints remaining.