The last few days in the motorsports world have been eye-openers. Valentino Rossi unfollowed the official MotoGP account, and Red Bull’s Christian Horner got sacked! While these are two major updates, Red Bull now has a replacement for Horner — Laurent Mekies.
While everyone is talking about Horner, his legacy at Red Bull, and his potential move in the future, Mekies has a lot to fulfil, and if he has been given the boss role at Red Bull, he is more than capable. But who is Laurent Mekies?
Laurent Mekies: Who is he?
Red Bull’s new Team Principal is the second in the team’s history and Laurent Mekies started his career in the motosports world back in 1999 with Formula 3. He later moved to F1 and made his debut with Arrows, before moving on to teams such as Minardi, Ferrari, Toro Rosso and latterly Racing Bulls.
At Minardi, Meikies worked as a racing engineer to some famous names such as Mark Webber, Justin Wilson, Zsolt Baumgartner, and Christijan Albers. Later, in 2005, he was promoted to the chief engineer in 2005 when Minardi was bought by Red Bull and renamed as Toro Rosso. He was with the team when Sebastian Vettel took the first grand prix vistory for the team in 2008.
Later, in 2014, Mekies took up a role within the FIA and oversaw F1 introduce the Halo, which has become a crucial safety aspect in racing. He also took up the role as deputy race director to Charlie Whiting, overseeing new rules and regulations.
In 2018, he moved to Ferrari as sporting director, and was later promoted to Ferrari’s track and performance department in 2019, and then took the role of deputy team principal and racing director of Ferrari, where he saw the team win again.
Later, in 2023, Mekies made a move to Toro Rosso, now Racing Bulls, as their team principal, before taking his big role at Red Bull Racing as the Team Principal and CEO. The question now remains, can Mekies bring about a change to the team and bring them to the top of the grid like they were? Time has the answer.