Laurent Mekies: Red Bull F1 team "very far" in Japan…

Red Bull F1 team principal Laurent Mekies admitted his squad is "very far" from the frontrunners in Japan after crippling balance issues have left his drivers off the pace.

Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar ended the day in 10th and 15th respectively, over 1.3 seconds off the front, after Red Bull struggled to dial in the balance of its RB22, which saw substantial upgrades in the shape of a revised sidepod and engine cover, and a tweak to the floor geometry.

Verstappen feared there would be "no easy fix" for Red Bull's car woes after set-up changes turned understeer into oversteer between Friday's two practice sessions, and his team boss Mekies felt that pessimism was warranted.

"We are very far, lacking quite a lot of performance," he told Sky Germany. "I think you can also hear it with the comments of our drivers. We have been unable so far to give them a car they could push with. So, we have quite a few fundamental things to sort out on our side.

"Of course, you don't want to have to go through this problem-solving, but I think it's part of the game and we just need to get to the bottom of our limitation as soon as possible and make the steps we need to make."

Laurent Mekies, Red Bull Racing Team Principal (Photo by: Mark Sutton / Formula 1 via Getty Images)

Mekies said Red Bull's problems go much further than its balance issues through medium-to-high-speed corners, including Suzuka's famed Esses in sector one, where its cars looked unsettled.

"It looks particularly bad in the high-speed corners. I don't think it's only a balance issue," the Frenchman explained. "I think there are probably some aspects of the car that we haven't unlocked well or that we haven't understood quite yet. It's the work we have to do now in the next few hours, in the next few days and probably in the next few weeks to get back to the level we want to be.

"It is clear that when you speak with Max, when you speak with Isack; they don't have a car they can push with. How much of that can we recover for tomorrow? Let's see. It's difficult to know right now whether what we are missing is within the car balance or whether there are things a bit more fundamental that we will need to correct."

According to chief engineer Paul Monaghan, Red Bull's Suzuka upgrades were significant, but he didn't think getting to grips with them played a big role in the squad chasing its own tail on Friday, which sometimes happens when teams introduce a lot of changes at once. "Geometrically, it's quite a big change. So, thank you everybody in Milton Keynes for getting here because that was a mighty effort," he said.

"That's behaving, but there are some other aspects of the car that are currently not very happy. And those are the ones we've got to try and correct for tomorrow."