Red Bull "have a lot of work ahead of us to unlock the performance," claims Mekies

Following a tough qualifying session for Red Bull, new team boss Laurent Mekies admitted that the Milton Keynes-based outift has "a lot of work ahead of us to unlock the performance."

Red Bull failed to find the rhythm on Friday at the Hungaroring, but they looked in a slightly better shape come the third and final practice. However, that uptick in form fell away in qualifying as neither Max Verstappen nor Yuki Tsunoda looked comfortable in the all-important session.

The Japanese was just over a tenth slower than the Dutchman in the first qualifying segment, but it was enough for him to fall at the first time of asking in Q1. Although Verstappen made it through in Q1 and progress into the final segment, he was never in the fight for the front rows and recorded his worst Qualifying of the year with an eighth place.

“We have not had an ideal weekend so far and we have been struggling to get the car in the right window, including in Qualifying. Grip has been an issue, pretty much from the start of free practice.

"We have tried many things across both cars, with both Yuki and Max and it is fair to say we have not given our drivers the car they wanted. Have we really cracked it? No, but now we have plenty of data help us figure out what the issues are.

"If we are to improve we must use days like this constructively, to ultimately be better. It’s uncomfortable but you can learn from these situations.

Mekies continued: "Yuki was knocked out of Q1 by only a couple of hundredths, and he was actually quite close to Max in both his runs, but we just didn’t have performance in the car.

"Max made it quite impressively through to Q3, despite our struggles and where he qualified is probably a true picture of where we are this weekend so far.

"We have a lot of work ahead of us to unlock the performance, but we will keep fighting and tomorrow will be a very different set of conditions. We are potentially going to have high temperatures in the race and we will see what we can do.

"We will be racing at a very impressive new look Hungaroring and we must credit the incredible work done here to completely transform the race track in just one year, with new garages, grandstands and a total overhaul. Well done to everyone involved, it’s a super venue to go racing in," concluded the Frenchman.