Laurent Mekies is the new CEO of Red Bull Racing, taking over from Christian Horner. Once the corporate part of Red Bull had decided to part with Horner, the promotion of Mekies from team principal at the junior Racing Bulls team is a logical move.
He already knows the company and has proved to be a capable pair of hands in the junior team role. He’s a former race engineer with a good technical background and extensive experience of other environments, having previously worked at Ferrari and the FIA. He’s a good communicator, has a pleasant personality, something that is always useful in getting a team of people on your side, all pointing in the same direction, making the team more efficient and engendering the sort of environment in which people are willing to go the extra mile.
But he has an enormous set of challenges ahead of him as the boss of the senior team. Short, medium and long term.
Short-term, he’s entering an unsettled team, one where the ongoing battle between the team boss and corporate Red Bull over the last couple of years has made for a tense atmosphere and which has already resulted in several key people moving on. He has to calm the horses and instil confidence from the workforce in his leadership. They need to believe he can lead them to new good times, especially as rival teams will be looking to take advantage of Horner’s departure to capture talent and knowledge from within the team.
All this is in addition to understanding the working of a much bigger organisation than any he has been in charge of before. He needs to quickly get a grasp of the team’s strengths and weaknesses and to prioritise accordingly. He needs to understand just where they are at with the Red Bull Powertrains power unit and what is needed there, if anything.
Medium term, it’s a team needing a bit of a facilities refresh. There’s a new wind tunnel coming, but is that all that’s needed? What about the other simulation tools, some of which he will already be familiar with as they are shared with Racing Bulls. But what is behind the repeated instances of Red Bull turning up at a circuit with an ill-balanced car which has to be totally reworked overnight? Why does it take a day of running to get the car in a good balance window?
