the thing is. it has. people don’t recognize enough the defecit that Checo left after they pushed him out and he quit. overnight they lost a ton of support from sponsors and one of the largest demographics of fans in f1. not to mention the other significant people they hemorrhaged, like jonathan wheatley and adrian newey who were also vital elements to the team’s efficiency. then they continued to pour gasoline on the fire by switching up drivers in a sheer panic move with no plan to support said second driver.
and afterwards it continued to get so bad that max implied he was ready to leave and they fired christian horner as a last act desperation move (which was a year overdue). Then they have admitted that they are sacrificing their budget for 2026 in order to pour into this year as basically a last hurrah.
I believe Mekkies was honestly trying his best because he truly wanted Yuki to stay and he was really trying to change the infrastructure of redbull and how their garage runs. The man was mortified when he saw they were hoarding parts while Yuki was driving a frankenstein car. And we saw those small improvements, but it still wasn’t enough. He’s still not powerful enough to redo the entire system and he still has to resign to the board’s decisions about the team.
There’s also still so much structural racism built into that team that hasn’t been uprooted. People like helmut marko have basically engrained that the Drivers of Color like Checo, Yuki, Isack are inherently worse-behaved people who can’t match Max because of racist false stereotypes like emotional aggressiveness or mental weakness/laziness. Especially since we know that the second garage was interacting with racist posts against their POC drivers. It’s embedded into the workplace that these drivers are inherently not worth supporting. Even though the reality is that the second driver needs actual support in order to be able to help the number one driver in the first place!!
technically, redbull is already dead. I’m being 100% serious the only reason they aren’t bottom of the barrel this year is because Max is genuinely one of the greatest drivers alive. and while I sincerely love Max, he’s one of my favorite drivers, redbull will continue to push this cycle of chewing up and spitting out drivers as long as Max is there. No matter how many times it fails.
