Red Bull are heading to the Italian Grand Prix as the only top-four team without a race win this season, and Laurent Mekies is not pretending otherwise.

“The mood will not be high until we are back to winning. Don’t expect us to be happy with the progress we have made,” the team principal told Formula1.com last week.

That same tone runs through his account of how he and Verstappen actually talk to each other behind the garage doors. Mekies, who was promoted to team principal in July 2025, has now spent a full season navigating Red Bull’s slide from the front of the grid, and he says the pair have settled on one rule.

Only one brief: to win

“We have only one brief, and it’s to win,” Mekies said in remarks carried by RacingNews365 on Thursday.

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“So, every time we are not winning, we are going to be, and we are going to stay, brutally honest with each other. We are going to challenge each other, and we are going to express frustrations, because that’s how we all feel as competitors, and that’s what gets us out of bed every day.”

It is a striking framing for a team that spent four years winning almost everything in sight. The RB22 has been off the pace of McLaren’s runaway package for most of the year, and Red Bull’s own decision to divert most of their remaining budget into the 2027 rules reset means little cavalry is coming for the final stretch of 2026.

Mekies has been blunt about that too, when asked whether Red Bull can still take a win in the remaining races.

“We absolutely still want to try and win races this year. Do we think we have enough pace in the car right now to win in a fair fight? No.”

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‘I told you I always wanted to stay’

The context for all of this is the contract Verstappen put his name to on 20 August, a two-year extension that ties him to Red Bull until the end of 2030. It was announced days before his home race at Zandvoort and ended months of speculation about whether he would jump ship in one of the most fluid driver markets in years.

Mekies says the decision was never really in doubt from Verstappen’s side.

“The simple truth is Max has always said that he wanted to stay with Red Bull. He has said that from the very first conversations we had about the extension to the very last conversation we had. When we finally agreed on everything, he said, ‘I told you I always wanted to stay!'”

Verstappen himself framed the deal around unfinished work rather than loyalty.

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“I am really pleased with the contract extension. We have the best people and I’m excited to keep working together with everyone to get back to the top again,” the Dutchman said in Red Bull’s announcement.

Red Bull now have their driver locked in for the entire first cycle of Formula 1’s 2026 engine regulations and beyond, and Mekies has described Verstappen as “the central point of the team”, the reference for every strategic call being made in Milton Keynes.

Verstappen’s first winless year since Toro Rosso

The Italian Grand Prix runs at Monza from 4 to 6 September, the 15th round of the 24-race calendar. Verstappen has not won a race in 2026, his first winless campaign since his rookie season with Toro Rosso, and Red Bull have not gone a full year without a victory since 2015.

First practice at Monza is scheduled for Friday 4 September.

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