Red Bull issue honest truth over upcoming major upgrade

Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies has admitted that the outfit's upcoming major upgrade package "will not be enough" to fully bridge the gap to the top three.

The Milton Keynes-based outfit is expected to introduce its next significant batch of new parts next weekend at the Austrian Grand Prix, the team's home race.

After the opening seven rounds, Red Bull has found itself firmly fourth in the pecking order, with a sizeable gap both to the top three and to the midfield behind.

Max Verstappen has managed to extract performance from the RB22 at venues featuring stop-start layouts, where acceleration and heavy braking have been crucial.

This allowed him to match the pace of the leading teams in Canada and Monaco, while at the more traditional Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya he found himself in a lonely fourth place.

Verstappen himself highlighted after Barcelona that Red Bull is stuck in fourth and will remain there unless it introduces new parts.

It is very much a season of rapid development, as it is the first year under the new regulations. However, even Red Bull's next upgrade package might not dramatically improve its performance.

"The picture of the season is these performance variations based on who is bringing an upgrade," Mekies told select media, including RacingNews365. "Ferrari made a big step forward. 

"Obviously, our next big one is in Austria, but it's only as good as the real lap time it brings on track. Everyone in Milton Keynes has been working very hard on that package, and there is no doubt that the Austrian upgrade alone will not be enough. 

"We know we'll need some further steps, but what is important is that we stay on this continuous, closing-the-gap trajectory that we have been on since post-Japan. 

"We need to continue to get closer, so that we don't talk anymore about four tenths, but hopefully about less."