Mekies reveals how he spent his first weeks at Red Bull
Asked to offer his first impressions of Red Bull Racing, freshly-appointed team boss Laurent Mekies stressed that his primary aim for the coming weeks is to get to know the strengths and the weaknesses of the Milton Keynes-based squad.
Just two days after the British Grand Prix, Red Bull Racing announced that Christian Horner would leave the team with immediate effect.
The Briton has been at the helm for almost the entire team's history in F1 but his exit follows a couple of troublesome years of internal struggles since Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz passed away.
Horner has been in charge of Red Bull since the team entered the sport in 2025, serving as team principal for two decades. During that time, the 51-year-old Briton has led Red Bull to six constructors' and eight drivers' world championship titles.
Red Bull elected to promote Laurent Mekies to lead the Milton Keynes-based outfit.
Mekies began his career at Arrows before working as a race engineer at Minardi. He was promoted to chief engineer at Toro Rosso prior to becoming the safety director and, later, deputy race director at the FIA.
Prior to his time with Red Bull GmbH, he served as sporting director and deputy team principal at Ferrari from 2018 to 2023.
Asked to offer his first impressions of Red Bull Racing, Mekies stressed that his primary aim for the coming weeks is to get to know the strengths and the weaknesses of the Milton Keynes-based squad.
"You know, the first impression is that you get into the building, you get through the trophy room and how can you feel? You just feel honoured, privileged.
"It’s unbelievable achievements that the team have been getting the last 20 years. So that’s the first wow effect you get. And then, of course, what these [these weeks] have been about is really trying to meet as many people as possible from the team.
"There is no other way, I think, to try to get to know the team, to start to understand the strengths and the weaknesses, to understand how we will be able to eventually support. That’s what I’ve been doing the last two weeks, trying to meet as many of our people as possible.
Mekies continued: "And the good news is it’s an incredible team. They didn’t win by luck or by mistakes. They won because of the accumulation of talents that there is in the buildings.
"Every small box you open and you look at how they go about a given topic or another thing, every time you say, “Wow, that’s really nice.”
"And that’s all coming from the people there at all levels that have been doing amazing jobs for all these years. So really, that’s how the first weeks have been.
