Laurent Mekies has conceded that Red Bull's 2026 power unit is not on terms with Mercedes, and confirmed the team will be looking to use the new performance-balancing rules to claw the deficit back.
The Red Bull team principal put the gap to the works Mercedes at around 0.3s a lap heading into the Miami sprint weekend, and was unequivocal about where most of it is coming from.
"Is it at the level of the very best? Absolutely not," Mekies told [Sky Sports]. "Hence, do we expect to be in that group of people able to be given the possibility to catch up? Yes, we certainly hope to be in that category."
ADUO and the 2% gate
The reference is to the Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities mechanism, written into the 2026 regulations to stop the new PU formula calcifying into a one-make stitch-up before it has even bedded in. Manufacturers more than 2% off the leader on the homologated benchmark can apply to open development through three windows across the season — a hard quantitative gate, not a paddock vibes-check.
Mekies endorsed the philosophy underpinning it, and pointedly aligned himself with Toto Wolff. "I think Toto is right. The tool is here to catch up, not to leapfrog anyone. So I'm completely with him on that one."
The first ADUO window had been pencilled in for after Miami, but the dropped Bahrain and Saudi Arabia openers may shift the activation point.
What the standings tell after the first 3 rounds
Sky Sports puts Mercedes 119 points clear of Red Bull in the constructors' table. Drilled into driver level, the picture is starker still.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli leads the championship on 72 points and two wins. George Russell sits second, 63 points and a win. Their combined 135-point haul is the entire 119-point delta — and then some — to Red Bull's two cars, who together have managed 16. Max Verstappen is ninth on 12, with rookie team-mate Isack Hadjar 12th on four. The four-time world champion is yet to win a race in 2026.
That is the leanest start of Verstappen's title-winning era, and Mekies was at pains to ringfence the driver from the wider conversation. "The Max we see is a fully committed Max. He wants a fast car and he's helping the team to get a fast car," he said. "We are conscious that the priority is that we give him a car he can push with… he can start to bring his 'Max effect.'"
Pecking order on the dyno
Mekies's read on the wider engine field places Mercedes alone at the top, with Ferrari, Audi and Red Bull bunched behind, and Honda — Aston Martin's supplier — bringing up the rear.
"The other guys are probably quite close to us, Ferrari and Audi, and fair enough, Honda is probably struggling a bit more," he said.
Whether that pecking order survives contact with the FIA's data is a separate question. ADUO eligibility is decided on submitted figures, not on team principal eyeballing, and any manufacturer shown to be inside the 2% band will be locked out of the catch-up route regardless of where its cars are running on Sundays.
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