Red Bull 'blown away' by capacity of 'best sensor' Max Verstappen

Laurent Mekies has marvelled at the capacity the "unreal" Max Verstappen has for motorsport, explaining he is still "blown away" by the Dutchman's level of technical feedback.

Reflecting on his first half a season of working with the four-time F1 drivers' champion, who he playfully calls not only the "best sensor" but also the "most expensive" one the Milton Keynes-based squad has, the 48-year-old shed light on how Verstappen immerses himself in motorsport.

Mekies took over from Christian Horner at the helm of Red Bull in the days following the British Grand Prix, in July, being promoted from the same position at junior outfit Racing Bulls.

Under his guidance, the six-time constructors' champion has enjoyed a turnaround in trajectory.

On a prolonged and sustained decline, the Frenchman has helped transform the team, instilling new ways of working and helping to lay the foundations for the critical floor upgrade that propelled Verstappen from best of the rest behind the McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri to finishing between them in this year's F1 drivers' championship, just two points adrift of the former in the standings.

However, whilst Mekies has been crucial to righting the Red Bull ship, he continues to be amazed by what his lead driver can deliver.

Speaking to a select group of media, including RacingNews365, he says: "As much as we have spent, all of us, too many years in Formula 1, and have seen Max doing unbelievable achievements, all I can tell you is that when you get the chance to work on his side of the paddock, you still get blown away.

"By: A) what you hear on the radios, because obviously, you guys hear a lot, but you don't hear everything, so the quality of the technical feedback, the level of sensitivity that he has to the car.

"We used to have this joke, saying he's the best sensor we have in the car, arguably the most expensive — but that's another question," he adds lightheartedly to laughter.

'That's something that looks completely unreal from the outside'

Whilst Norris prevailed in his quest for a maiden drivers' title, taking the crown from Verstappen, it is the Red Bull star who is widely considered to have been the stand-out performer in 2025, taking the fight to the dominant MCL39s in the unfancied RB21, even before the Monza-spec floor was developed.

Although he was powerless to prevent falling to 104 points behind the then-championship leader Piastri by that stage, it is something that further illustrates the mesmerising form he displayed across the campaign, as he dragged himself back into the battle against all odds.

Believing himself to be out of contention at that point, his attention shifted towards competing at the Nurburgring Nordschleife in GT3 cars. Mekies, adding a B, uses it as further proof of Verstappen's seemingly limitless ability.

"And not only that, but then the guy lives day and night with motorsport," he explains. "Day and night. Probably more than any of us.

"So he is motor sporting in some respect; he's not escaping from a meeting to go and do something else. He's completely submerged in it.

"In between the races, he's doing his sim racing, probably with — somewhere in his mind — something he can learn or improve in his driving or in his preparations for the next race.

"If he has a free weekend, he'll go racing somewhere in a GT3. That's something that looks completely unreal from the outside. And, as a matter of fact, it is unreal.

"And he does that with the capacity to immerse himself in the projects, not to judge it from outside, but to find the right keys to make sure that we all push in the same direction, to make sure that we all appreciate what he's trying to tell us..."