Red Bull has half a second deficit to frontrunners - Mekies

Red Bull is around half a second adrift of having the ability to challenge for victories against the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari, according to team principal Laurent Mekies.

Max Verstappen finished fourth behind Lewis Hamilton, George Russell and Lando Norris at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, with the Dutchman 17 seconds off the podium and 40s behind race-winner Hamilton. Mekies believes that showing was in line with Red Bull’s understanding of how big a gap it has to close, but that the overall picture has improved since the opening rounds of the year.

“The race produced an accurate picture of where we are with our current package on this sort of track,” Mekies said. “Coming into the weekend, we knew that a power and high speed corners circuit like Barcelona would present a slightly more complicated challenge than other types of circuit.

“What we saw [in the race] mirrored the situation in qualifying, in that we could fight with the other top teams but we did not have the pace to challenge for the win. To do that, we still need to find between four and five tenths.

“Nevertheless, we have made progress compared to where we were at the start of the season, although as always, the final tenths are going to be the hardest to find. Everyone in Milton Keynes is working flat out to bring further developments as we push to close this gap.”

Having secured just one podium so far this season, Verstappen says car development is required but didn’t suggest there is one particular area of weakness compared to the frontrunners.

“It's clear that we're still behind Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren, because I basically finished behind each one of them [in Barcelona],” Verstappen said. “So we're still, I think, P4 as a team. Maybe a little bit better, but it's still not of course where we want to be. But it’s work in progress and I hope very soon that we can pick up a little bit more performance.

“In general it’s just bringing more performance - I mean, better upgrades - which we are working on.”

And Verstappen doesn’t believe the upcoming Austrian Grand Prix offers a greater opportunity than Barcelona given the deficit that Red Bull currently faces.

“I think in general we're still the fourth fastest team. So that's not really going to change on any of the upcoming tracks. Unless, of course, you bring performance. Because we're not going to solve it with just changing the setup. So that's what we've got to look at.

“That's the season, whoever brings upgrades will make a jump. It just depends on who is bringing the biggest one, or the biggest improvement.”