Despite Red Bull seemingly now paying the price for its development 'war' with McLaren in the fight for the 2025 titles, Laurent Mekies insists it was the right way to go.

Though the Woking outfit claimed the constructors' crown in Singapore - its second successive title - the drivers' title was still up for grabs, even though Max Verstapepn was languishing 63 points behind championship leader Oscar Piastri.

In their determination to claim the prestigious drivers' title Mclaren and Red Bull continued their ferocious upgrade programmes while rivals had already switched focus to 2026 and one of the biggest overhauls to the regulations in living memory.

Despite a shaky start to the season, McLaren now appears to have got its 2026 challenge back on track, while Red Bull appears to be paying the price for its failure to get to grips with the overhaul sooner.

Joint-fifth in the team standings, drivers Verstappen and Isack Hadjar are ninth and twelfth in the driver standings, the Dutchman crashing out of qualifying in Q1 in Australia and failing to make it out of Q2 in Japan.

"We thought, and we still think, it was the right thing to do," the Frenchman tells the Beyond the Grid podcast, "because we felt that turning the page to '26 would have been a little bit of an easy escape and a wishful thinking that next year will be better, even though we didn't fully understand what were the limitations of 2025.

"We didn't think it was the right way," he insists. "Now, of course, the time and energy we invested for the late push last year, does it have an impact on where you start '26? Of course it does. Of course, we pay a bit of the price today. Do we use it as an excuse? No!

"We are not happy with the starting point," he admits. "But we think we will get through these difficulties. As we did last year, we will get the full understanding of the limitations. This team has been very, very good in turning things around and we have another chance to do it this year."

Brave words, and while he is correct in saying that the team has a successful record in "turning things around", this is not the Red Bull team of old, it is a team in disarray, what with the stream of high level departures (and sackings), the switch to its own power unit, and continued talk of factions within the team, not to mention Verstappen's unhappiness with the 2026 regulations.

Nonetheless, Mekies insists the team is up for the fight.

"We try to do everything we can to make sure this is not a transition year, despite the size of the challenge, despite the new power unit challenge," he says. "We want to make sure that we are not in a transition year. No. We are not at all in that mode. We are in full attack mode.

"As we said, we are not happy about the starting point," he admits. "But if you walk in Milton Keynes right now, there is fire in every single department. There is a burning fire of wanting to go back as fast as possible to a more competitive car, to a better position.

"And that's what you feel in Milton Keynes today," he insists, "that burning drive to get enough understanding and development to the car, in a way that we can outperform the development of the competition and get back up."