TEAM REPRESENTATIVES: Laurent MEKIES (Racing Bulls), Andrew SHOVLIN (Mercedes), Ayao KOMATSU (Haas)

Q: Laurent, if I could start with you, there has been so much focus on Liam and Yuki in the build-up to this race. So can we start by talking about them, and Liam, first of all. What kind of a driver has rejoined your team this weekend?
Laurent MEKIES: Look, Liam is in a good place. He's in good spirits. I'm not going to tell you that he was happy about the news last week because certainly it was difficult to digest, but honestly, the next day he was with us in Faenza doing the seat fit. The day after he was back in the sim and here we are in Japan, so it's good. He knows he has an important role to play with us in the battle we have in the midfield. He has a point to prove out there. We are all very conscious that his talent is there and it's about finding the right conditions to extract it back out of him.
 
Q: You say he has a point to prove. You know what he's capable of and you've worked with him for more than 12 months. Were you surprised by his two outings with Red Bull this year?
LM: I think we were all surprised. Of course, I think nobody was expecting that he would be back of the grid for these two races. It was certainly a very tricky set of circumstances, but to tell you that any of us would have anticipated that would be a lie. That being said, with high confidence, we think that his talent did not disappear and we start back these adventures where we left it last year.
 
Q: Can we quickly talk about Yuki as well? As you've told us many times how good he is, do you think he's ready for this promotion to Red Bull Racing?
LM: Yes, for sure he's ready. As you said, we had these questions here many times in the past and we kept repeating that Yuki has made an incredible step last year compared to his previous seasons. We really felt that if he was going to make another step in 2025, we would be talking about a very serious level — and that's exactly what he has done. So, credit to him. He also had the bad news at the end of last season. He went to Japan, he came back in very strong spirit. As soon as he joined us back in Faenza and in Milton Keynes in January, he worked extremely hard. The spirit was there, the attention to all the details was there. When he jumped in the car in Bahrain, he showed pretty much straight away to us that he had made another step.
 
Q: Final one for me. Let's bring it on to your car now. You've had a very fast racing car so far this year. What is it capable of this weekend at Suzuka?
LM: You know, we take nothing for granted now. The car was fast in Melbourne and in China, which is a good sign. But equally, the pack is very tight behind the first four top teams. Between P5 and P10 in the Constructors' Championship, it's extremely tight. So we think we will be in that fight again this weekend. Whether we have enough to lead the pack, at least as we did in qualifying in Melbourne and in Shanghai, it's too early to say. So we take it step by step. We have to fight our way up to that midfield every race weekend. Let's see where it takes us. At this very moment, we are lacking in transforming this pace into points, so we are trying to get a smooth weekend.
 
Q: Andrew, if we could come to you now. Encouraging start for Racing Bulls this year, also for Mercedes. Just how encouraged are you?
Andrew SHOVLIN: Well, it's been a lot calmer than the last few years, mainly because the car is what we intended it to be. It hasn't really got the vices that we've had in a couple of previous years and that's down to doing good work over the winter. Good work last year to try and understand the problems. So far, we haven't seen many circuits, but it's worked well over the ones we have and through a range of conditions. So it's good. There's clearly a gap to McLaren that we need to chip away at, but that looks more like just a normal development race that we need to get stuck into rather than trying to get on top of any of the handling vices that we’ve had.
 
Q: As you say, a sample of two so far this year. When we go back to Japan last year, it wasn't such an easy race for the team. Do you see Suzuka this weekend as a bit of a litmus test?
AS: I wouldn't say it's a litmus test in that sense. In some ways, I think Bahrain will be more interesting because there you've got a rear overheating circuit and that was one of the things we really struggled with. It’s another circuit. From P1, the car looks to be working OK. You’d also say that McLaren looked like the ones to beat. But, you know, the weekend started OK and we'll see how it goes over the next few sessions.
 
Q: Andrew, can we talk about drivers? Toto has been full of praise for George Russell after the last outing in China. In what areas do you see that he's stepped up this year?
AS: Certainly within the team, he's very calm. He seems very confident. He's done a great job in the first two races, so that's been really encouraging. He just seems to be very relaxed in his position in the team now and he's just going about getting the points, trying to qualify as well as he can. Front row in China was very encouraging. He's pushing us hard to improve and he's doing a lot of work himself.
 
Q: What about the debutant, Kimi Antonelli? Have you been impressed by everything he’s done?
AS: Yeah. We did a lot of work with the old cars with Kimi, trying to get him used to driving a Formula 1 car. We were trying to do that in a relatively short space of time. From the first time we put him in an F1 car, you could see he was going to be a decent F1 driver and we had high expectations. If you look at how he performed in that wet race in Melbourne, that was quite exceptional for someone in their first race. And while we did a lot of mileage with him in the TPC testing, he's not running with other cars, so this is the first opportunity you can put him in those racing situations. He was unlucky that he had damage to his car in Melbourne Qualy. Unlucky that he had damage on lap one in the race in China. But from what we've seen, really impressed and reassuring that he's only going to get better from where he is already.
 
Q: Thank you for that. Ayao, thank you for waiting. We've been talking about drivers, so why don't we continue that theme. Ollie Bearman first of all. How impressed were you with the way he bounced back after the disappointment of Melbourne?
Ayo KOMATSU: Very impressed. But that's already what we knew. We knew he was capable of that. Melbourne was a bit of a surprise to us, but we believed in his ability. We had a decent conversation in Melbourne and also before we started running in Shanghai. We basically said: "Look, you've got the talent, you've got everything you need to perform, you just have to do every single lap we plan to do this weekend." Which is exactly what he's done. He chipped away on every single step and learned every single run and then the performance on Sunday was amazing. That’s the Ollie we know. Like Kimi, he's got a lot more potential and growth to offer, so really enjoy working with him.
 
Q: What about Esteban Ocon? Only a sample of two races. What do you feel he's bringing to the team?
AK: Really, again, his work ethic. We know he's quick. He's a proven quantity. He's a race finisher, scored so many points, but he's still very young and very determined for more success in Formula 1. He's someone that we can grow together with. Especially when we have a car problem like we had in Melbourne, to have a driver like that fully integrated into the team, driving the engineers — doesn't matter how much time he needs to spend with them — he's really eager to improve it together. That makes a huge difference for the team. So that's what I expected and that's exactly what we are seeing. Very pleased about that.
 
Q: What about the performance of the car? It has been a bit of a roller coaster season for the team. How do you explain that?
AK: Oh yeah, I think some other top teams already had this issue in previous years, but we are managing it OK. Last year we thought we had a good process and metrics to make sure we don't go into that kind of issue. But then this year again… We didn’t see it in Bahrain, it’s just purely because of the type of corners. We saw snippets of it, but we didn’t understand the severity. As soon as we started running in Melbourne, it was pretty apparent. But the good thing was everybody accepted it and said: ‘right, we've got a big issue we need to solve’. Then we got on with it, trying to understand where we started diverging from making sure we don't go into that kind of problem and then we wanted to bring something here. So yeah, that was a big issue. Still a big issue. I wouldn’t say we solved it. Here this morning in FP1, we didn’t see that issue, but it's not to say we solved it. So it's still a long road ahead.
 
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Luke Smith – The Athletic) Andrew, to follow up on Tom's question about George — obviously this year he's the experienced driver in the team. Have you seen any change in terms of his approach now he's sort of team leader, after Lewis has left? Or is it more just the case of building on what you've seen through his last few years?
AS: It's inevitably going to change when you've got an experienced driver like George and then a rookie like Kimi. So those two are working together, and George is trying to give him the benefit of his experience. I would say that George has stepped up into that role — being the team's most experienced driver now. We always knew he was quick, but in his own approach, he has brought a confidence and a calmness this year that's working very well for us. You look at that race in Melbourne — George was communicating really well with us as to what the weather was doing and what he was feeling in the car. We were using a lot of that information to copy the strategy onto Kimi’s side because, for Kimi, a lot of it was new. But it’s really pleasing to see how the two of them are working together, and how George has stepped up into that role.
 
Q: (Jon Noble – The Race) Laurent, it's pretty clear the car's been very quick this year, but I think Yuki said after the last race you wasted a lot of points with the strategy calls in Australia and China. What analysis have you done into that? Are there common themes between the two and have you changed anything for this weekend in the approach or how decisions are made?
LM: First, yes — we have certainly accepted that we made two critical mistakes in two races. So it’s hurting, but we learned the hard way. And yes, it has forced us to review our process, to review our decision-making chain in these sorts of situations. Of course, you do the hard analysis and you make sure you have an action plan that comes out of it. We have made changes to our process going into these races. It doesn’t mean that we will improve from one end to the other in one go, but certainly, especially with the car competitiveness being where it is and the level of competition being where it is, we are certainly putting a large focus on trying to pick up also in these areas.
 
Q: (David Schneider – Hersey Shiga Global). Question for Komatsu-san. We have Yuki Tsunoda, Honda Racing, Ryo Hirakawa in FP1, and Ayao Komatsu with Toyota Gazoo Racing. Would you consider Japan now as one of the leading Formula 1 nations, and what else could we do to make Formula 1 more popular in Japan?
AK: Difficult question. I don't know if we are a leading nation, but certainly after a bit of a dip in popularity of Formula 1 in Japan, I think the interest is definitely coming back. Again, what Yuki is doing this year — or last year like Laurent said, he made a massive step that was visible to everyone — and for him, for a Japanese driver, to drive for one of the top teams, it’s never happened before. That’s a huge story and that's really gaining momentum again here. Hirakawa, a very good driver, getting out in FP1 — all these things help. Also, I think having this F1 race in springtime here helps as well. It's not just one thing. I've heard that the event in Tokyo was very successful. So all those bits and pieces count, and I can only see positive signs. So yeah, really exciting time.
 
Q: (Joel Tansay  – The Japan Times) This is for Laurent. You mentioned Yuki being ready for the Red Bull seat. Just wondering, what kind of growth have you seen in him from a maturity standpoint?
LM: You know, we often think that drivers only grow precisely from a maturity standpoint — in the calmness and in the analysis — but I think in Yuki’s case, we have seen him making steps 360°. We have seen him being more calm, being more mature, improving massively his technical feedback. Really quite an incredible step across the last 12 months, and this is converting to speed. As a result, the natural speed when he gets into the car is higher straight away. When you combine all that, well, you turn a young driver into a team leader, and that’s really the role he was taking into the team, certainly from the start of the season. So I think it was a very impressive example of improvement at 360°, and as we know, it never comes for free or with no effort. You can sense how much effort and concentration he's been putting into that.
 
Q: Quick one for me. You talk about a 360° improvement. Talking in the car, what is the most impressive thing you’ve seen Yuki do?
LM: He’s able to turn up to a race weekend and, from the first lap of FP1 to the last lap of the race, do just a purely faultless weekend. Of course, we are not fast enough for that to be visible to most of you guys, but we have seen him executing weekends, or qualifications, or races under serious pressure… Take Melbourne – he put the car in P5 there on the dry, I think it’s his best qualifying ever. Take the Sprint Race in China – he finished P6 with huge pressure from faster cars behind him, didn’t put a foot wrong. So what you see outside of the car is certainly turning up into very tangible improvements when he’s driving the car.

Q: (Adam Cooper – Adam Cooper F1) One question for Laurent. Going back to the end of last year, how much input, how much feedback did you give in terms of the driver decision-making process? Did you personally think Liam was ready for promotion after 11 races, given that Christian calls it the hardest job in Formula 1? Did you have some sort of concerns that maybe it was too much too soon?
LM: It’s an interesting one. You know, as a team — as Visa Cash App Racing Bulls — our first objective is competitiveness. Our second objective is to grow young talents for the Red Bull family. Our job is to get to the end of the year, or sooner in some cases, and to put on the table one or two drivers which hopefully are of interest for our big brother. And to answer your question — in the case of last season, we felt that was the case with both drivers. That’s what we presented to Christian, to Helmut, and to the wider Red Bull family — two drivers that are, according to us, able to step up into the bigger team. Then of course, the rest of the decision is completely up to them.
 
Q: (Miyamoto Akari – Hersey Shiga Global) Question for Ayao Komatsu. I can see so many of your fans in Japan, especially many of the young generation who would like to be engineers or team principals like you one day. Can you give us some tip or advice for them?
AK: Yeah, advice for me is — when I got interested in Formula 1 when I was a kid, all the others apart from my parents told me: “Don’t be so stupid. You will never make it.” I didn’t listen to any of them. So my advice would be: don’t listen to those people who tell you that you cannot do it. You know, you can do pretty much anything, I think, if you put your mind to it and dedicate your life to it. I think it’s just that sometimes the first step is the hardest one to make, but I hope that people have the courage to make that first step in making the dream. Because to me, if you try — even if you fail — it kind of doesn’t matter. As long as you put everything into it, even if you don’t make it to the original goal, you learn something from it. And then as a human being, you can use that at your next stage in your life. So please, just take that initial step.
 
Q: (Jon Noble – The Race) To Andrew, the team seems to be kind of more on top of this current generation of car this year compared to where it's been in the past, where it's been a bit more up and down. Is there a fundamental understanding that you have now that was lacking in the past? Is it just consistency in chipping away at what it was, or was there a big concept element that shifted to give you the platform you have?
AS: No, I mean, I wouldn’t say we’ve really learned anything that we didn’t know halfway through last year. Where we’ve definitely done a better job is with the simulator work over the course of the winter — tracking the development of the car, making sure that the solutions we’re bringing to balance problems are appropriate for the balance problems we’re going to end up with. That whole process has been much more together than we’ve had in recent years. There were no surprises with winter testing. As we’re going through these early races, it’s encouraging that we’re seeing what we expect to see. As I said, there’s still work to do to catch McLaren, but that’ll just be the normal development work.
 
Q: (Jon Noble – The Race) Andrew, just following that up. George Russell talked about the team in the past falling into the trap of improving one area of the car and then having unintended consequences on another. You kept kind of chasing around. Was that a problem in the past and is that something you’ve addressed? Has that simulator improvement killed that issue?
AS: Yeah, I mean, it is really quite like he describes, where we would get a bit fixated on one thing and then inadvertently introduce a new problem. Getting the car… Well, these regulations are quite difficult to make a car that’s nicely balanced over a range of circuits, a range of different corner speeds — and being in control of that through your development is the key. As you change one area, you can affect another. It was really just about having much tighter control on that loop. That meant the car that rolled out in Bahrain was what we were hoping to see.
 
Q: Ayao, can I just come to you now? You made a lot of engineering changes inside the garage over the winter. Tell us, how are they bedding in?
AK: I think it’s pretty well. I’ve done a lot more preparation before the season started — back at the factory, working together, obviously without the real pressure, but just the process: how you talk to each other, how you communicate, understanding each other. So even when we went through pre-season Bahrain testing, that was pretty apparent. Of course, then the first race in Melbourne would be naturally very difficult to manage, but I was really happy with how people were staying calm, communicating, and doing a very good job. Shanghai was another step. Again, we’re just growing as a team. The important thing is working together as a team and supporting each other through difficult situations. I feel we are doing that. So yeah, very happy.
 
Q: (Adam Cooper – Adam Cooper F1) You're all running rookies this year. Can I ask you for your thoughts or verdicts on the other drivers — the other rookies, other than the guys in your own teams? Who’s impressed you, who’s caught your eye?
LM: You know, I think it’s quite a great generation of rookie drivers that we've got this year coming into Formula One, and I think they are all proving that they have the level to be here. They have all been through various levels of pressure. I think it’s quite early to give a judgment on who’s fastest. We've seen a roller coaster that most of them have been going through, so I think it’s early days.
 
Q: I know Adam wanted your thoughts on other rookies, but can we just ask you about Isack Hadjar and how he bounced back from that disappointment in Melbourne?
LM: I think he has been outstanding, really. In fairness to Isack, he had one day of dry testing in his life in a Formula 1 car before going to Bahrain test. Then a day and a half later, you are in Melbourne. And if you take that into consideration and see what he has done in Melbourne — I think he was half a tenth from Q3 — I think it was an outstanding debut. Then you get the massive cold shower with what happened in the formation lap, and he bounced back straight away, went to China — a track he had never driven — and put the car in P7 in qualifying. So I think it says a lot about the sort of level these guys are at. Isack has been doing outstanding, but he’s getting a very quiet time right now because we have all the excitement with Yuki and Liam. But the truth is, the raw speed undoubtedly is there, and we are looking forward to starting this development path with him. As much as we have seen all the other very good rookies developing through the months and through the years, we’re looking forward to seeing how much more he's going to bring to this quite fantastic starting point.
 
Q: Andrew, your thoughts on the rookies?
AS: Well, I mean, it's quite impressive the way that a lot of them can go from F2 or other feeder series straight into F1 and perform at a good level. To be honest, we’ve had so much focus on Kimi. We haven’t really been looking at everyone else. With Kimi, we’re measuring him by where he is compared to George, where he is compared to the other drivers in the top teams. But yeah, there’s obviously a lot of talent there. It is difficult for them — when you've got one and a half days in Bahrain to get used to the new car, then you're thrown into some of the situations we've had — the wet race in Melbourne, difficult circuits like China and here in Suzuka. They're all quite challenging tracks. But I think it’s quite exciting for the sport to have so many new names coming into it.
 
Q: And Andrew, when you look at Kimi's data and George’s data, where are the main differences at this stage?
AS: Well, the big one is — George has been to this track many times. He knows his way round it. You could see straight off in P1 that he’s pushing the car and putting it on the limit, and Kimi is deliberately stepping into that because he knows the worst thing for your weekend is you lose part of a session or you damage the car, and it just sets you back, a) in the learning but also in your confidence. So he's having to structure his weekends with Bono to sort of close that gap through the course of it. There isn’t one area where it’s different. George just has a lot of experience — and obviously a lot of natural talent as well — and the big thing that Kimi is lacking is the experience.
 
Q: Ayao?
AK: It's very similar, to be honest. I think it's very good for the feeder series, and it’s impressive that they come into Formula One — nothing prepares them for this pressure and intensity — and they’re able to perform at the level they do. Especially if I talk about Ollie, because like Andrew I’m focusing much more on our own drivers than the other rookies. What's impressive is, of course, we knew he's got speed. But the maturity at the age of 19 is pretty impressive. At such a young age, he has the maturity and the ability to understand all of our situation and conduct himself in a certain way. So as an overall package, I think his preparation is amazing. I'm pretty impressed. It’s exciting to be able to talk about these things.
 
Q: (John Noble – The Race) Ayao, you said the floor change coming this weekend was a bit of a risk, but what’s the first impression after FP1? It seemed in Sector 1 and the high-speed areas, it still had a bit of a deficit compared to some of your closest competitors.
AK: Yeah, but it’s a pretty different situation to Melbourne and Shanghai as well. Even if you look at Sector 1, it’s not everywhere. It’s one place where we're lacking performance and it’s not the same issue. We've been running different floors across the cars and if the answer was completely conclusive, we would have equalised the cars for FP2. But to be honest, it’s not. So we’re going to carry on our test programme in FP2. The problem is not as severe as Melbourne, but we’ve got another problem. Of course, as always — if you solve one issue, there’s a new one popping up. We’ve got to react quickly as a team and make the car a bit more competitive in FP2.
 
ENDS