Purple Bull Workforce Principal Laurent Mekies responded positively to George Russell’s declare that Purple Bull is now the ‘crew to beat’ after two consecutive wins for Max Verstappen.
Verstappen took his first win of the 2026 season in Sepang, and adopted it up with victories in each the Dash and predominant Grand Prix in Singapore.
George Russell advised media after the Marina Bay race that he thinks Purple Bull are presently the ‘crew to beat’, after most thought-about Mercedes the highest canines for almost all of the yr.
While Mekies didn’t disagree with Russell’s evaluation, he was cautious to emphasize that Purple Bull has accomplished it’s main improve programme for the yr, so different groups might nonetheless combine up the order.
“I believe what’s a reality is that, in these final three races, we had the tempo to win, and truly we received two out of the three,” Mekies mentioned.
“So, for the primary time this season, in these three races we had the last word tempo, and it’s honest to say that the three tracks are completely different sufficient for one to suppose that shifting to different varieties of tracks, the automobile must be aggressive.”
Mekies: “We expect we will combat for wins”
“Now, it’s by no means a given, and you’ve got seen this with many, many examples this yr. You had the back-to-back wins from McLaren, after which they suffered a bit extra after.
“You had some very dominant intervals from Mercedes, and after that, been struggling. So, it’s a combat each race weekend to extract all the things.
“If we achieve this, we predict we will combat for wins. There may be one other component, which is that, as it’s well-documented, now we have accomplished our replace programme for this yr, so this pecking order might properly very quickly change if some or a lot of our opponents convey upgrades.
“Now, don’t get me fallacious, it doesn’t imply that we’ll not proceed to push very exhausting to enhance.
“We had mentioned to one another the primary win is the goal, however the different goal is to take all the training. So, the event programme is not going to change. We now have put our focus to ’27. We expect there’s nonetheless an enormous quantity of studying in ’26 that we might use in ’27.”
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