Laurent Mekies says the size of the step forward made by Racing Bulls in the last 15 months will need to be repeated to start nibbling at the frontrunners.

With Red Bull’s sister team rebranding and going through sweeping managerial changes prior to 2024, team boss Laurent Mekies has flourished in the role of taking the Faenza-based squad from the back of the grid into the midfield.

Laurent Mekies: The Racing Bulls organisation is starting to click together

It’s less than 18 months since the former AlphaTauri squad went through something of a rebirth, with former team boss Franz Tost retiring from his role after almost 20 years at the helm.

Tost was open about the fact that fresher eyes were needed to lead Red Bull’s sister team, and the responsibility of doing so was passed on to Peter Bayer, as CEO, with former Ferrari sporting director Laurent Mekies taking on the role of an F1 team boss for the first time.

The French engineer is no newcomer to Faenza though, having joined the team when it was still Minardi back in 2002 before staying on at the then-Toro Rosso team between 2005 and ’14.

Circling back to Faenza after forays into working at the FIA and Ferrari had something of a feel of returning home, entrusted with the task of turning Racing Bulls into a more competitive outfit – autonomous in its own right while making use of the regulatory provisions that allow it to lean on Red Bull Racing for the supply of certain technical aspects of the car.

Commercially, Racing Bulls has carved out its own entity as VCARB (Visa Cash App RB), although this took a little while to catch on as, initially at least, the ‘RB’ letters ostensibly didn’t stand for anything – a situation which was rectified for year two.

The start of the second season for Racing Bulls has largely been a positive one, even if points are still a little harder to come by than hoped, with Racing Bulls seemingly positioned right at the top of the bottom half of the grid in terms of car performance.

Scoring eight points from the first six race weekends, courtesy of the sensational rookie Isack Hadjar and Yuki Tsunoda’s Chinese GP Sprint, it only seems a matter of time until the returning Liam Lawson starts adding to his tally and underlines the strength of Racing Bulls’ young talent pool, having not had the benefit of pre-season testing with the car after a short-lived promotion to the senior team.

Mekies is well-known in the paddock for his jovial and friendly demeanour, and he’s all smiles as he welcomed me into the Racing Bulls offices in the paddock at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

No longer the new team boss on the block and, given the upward momentum his team has shown since he took over almost 18 months ago, it’s perhaps not a surprise that he’s relaxed and confident as we begin our interview reflecting on the changes that he and Bayer have brought about within the Faenza-based squad.

“We’ve made a lot of changes in the last 14 months when we got the go-ahead to press on with the project,” he said.

“I guess, one year after, you look back and say we’ve made a lot of changes and we’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way, but it’s also one of the strengths in the Red Bull group that you are given a lot of freedom that allows you to move fast.

“You move fast, you make mistakes, you correct fast, and you move forward.

“So 14/15 months after, you look back and you say, ‘We’ve done all that’ but what you have in mind is what is next to be done, you know? You never feel like you have settling.

“You say ‘That’s what’s in front of us now to do’ but what is great is to see that the project is live, that we have our identity, that there is this special spirit around us right now, and that people are starting to click together in the wake of all the changes we have done.

“Many new people, many people new in their jobs, and many challenges in the organisation, and it’s starting to click together, while we are conscious that there is another step of that size ahead of us if we want to reach our goals.”

One of those big changes has come about in only the last few weeks, with former technical director Jody Egginton moving into Red Bull Advanced Technologies to become engineering director, having served in senior technical roles at the team through its various iterations between 2014 and this year.

Having been technical director since 2019, he began his new role on April 1st, and, in his place, Racing Bulls has delegated its technical requirement across a triumvirate of seasoned names – roughly coinciding with the move away from its old Bicester wind tunnel and into a new aero facility at Milton Keynes.

“It’s a very nice feeling for the Red Bull family as a whole, to see people able to change jobs, going from motor racing to other activities, so it’s great that Jody could take this new challenge in the family, and is always going to be very close to this team,” Mekies said.

“He has spent 10 years here and has done a brilliant job. We think we have a very strong technical team with Tim [Goss, chief technical officer], Guillaume [Cattelani, car performance], and Andrea Landi [car design].

“Again, it’s quite a unique split that we have decided to take on the way we organise the technical directions but we think we have a very strong base there. We have Alan at the race track and many, many other people who have stepped up in new roles, or have arrived in new roles from outside, across the company.

“We feel we have an incredible base of talent in Faenza and Milton Keynes. Now, we really feel we need these guys to gel together but, in terms of talent, we feel we have the right people in and it’s a competitive business – we are not going to outperform the other midfielders by being bigger, by spending more money, because it’s not going to happen.

“Our opportunity is to keep things simple, to keep things sharp, and keep things very direct. Therefore the human, personal connection, or interpersonal connection of these key people and, more generally, of our group, is our main card to go and play with these big guys.

“So we spent a lot of time trying to build the right level of harmony and the right spirit and the right energy in the team so that we can stay simple, stay direct, and be performance-obsessed. Be no blame and no nonsense, that’s what we are trying to do.”

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Racing Bulls and its synergy with Red Bull

With the changes at Racing Bulls coming in the middle of a stable technical rules cycle, it’s perhaps no surprise that, despite clear improvement, the team’s relative position in the bottom half of the Constructors’ Championship hasn’t yet changed much.

Competitiveness and consistency have clearly improved but, in a field as tightly packed as what’s racing in F1 2025, further big steps are needed to kick it up another gear. Might the major regulations change en route for next season help with that?

Eighth place in last year’s Constructors’ Championship means that the team is amongst those with the most wind tunnel and CFD hours available to develop this year as well as prepare for 2026, a fact Mekies acknowledges as a small advantage, but the tearing up of the rulebook, by itself, won’t transform Racing Bulls’ fortunes further.

“We need this part to click in, to gel in,” he said of the team’s changes in infrastructure and personnel.

“It takes time for people, especially if you have integrated a lot of new people and changed a lot of staff in the organisation. It takes time to re-gel around new processes and a new approach.

“Some of them arrived at the end of last year, so it’s still very, very fresh. It’s probably fair to say that the steps we have made in the last 15 months, we probably need another step of that scale in the next 15 months to be a credible contender behind the top four.

“So it’s continuing to do what we are doing in injecting skills where we feel we are not yet at the required level and building the infrastructure around that.”

As for where he feels Racing Bulls may be in its progress for the revolutionary ruleset, all while trying to balance that with development for this year in a hotly contested midfield, Mekies was open about the extent of this challenge.

“The truth is nobody knows where the other guys are,” he said.

“So the reality is that you test on your regulations, you take a big hit in performance, you start to recover that performance at a rate, and you hope that that point where you are there is not too far from where the other guys are at that point in time.

“But you have no way to compare that to anyone. So I don’t think anybody feels confident at that stage.

“On top of that, you have the tricky balance between the resource allocations you decide to have between 2025 and ’26 and, as you have seen, we are in a crazy midfield this year. The midfield now is anything after the top four, basically.

“Whether or not you can keep your head above the water and be able to fight on top of that group, you’re going to score points every race or so. If you are down by a tenth or tenth a half, you will not score points at all for quite a few races! So it’s a tough compromise to make.”

Towards the end of 2023, Red Bull’s Helmut Marko was clear that the expectations of the Faenza squad were to lean into the permitted regulatory articles that allow for greater technical synergy between the two teams.

This is quite limited in scope – certainly, the VCARB02 is not a Red Bull clone, as evidenced by how the returning Lawson is far more comfortable with it than he was with one of the Milton Keynes-developed cars, but there are some provisions for some shared componentry such as rear suspension assemblies and gearboxes, front axles, and certain parts of the hydraulic systems.

With Racing Bulls now having a new facility on the Red Bull campus in Milton Keynes, at what stage is that process of increasing the synergy between the two?

“I think, from a synergy perspective, we are where we want to be, in a way that the regulations allow you to share some components and we are sharing them,” Mekies said.

“Honestly, the focus is moreso on the non-synergetic side of the business, meaning everything we are designing and producing at Faenza or in Milton Keynes – that’s where we need to make the step next if we want to have another breakthrough in performance.

“From a synergy perspective, I think it has been sorted very early in the event.”

Has Laurent Mekies changed since taking over as Racing Bulls team boss?

All appears calm within Racing Bulls, then, with Mekies rising to the challenge of leading a team – he’s the second-youngest team boss in F1 (following the resignation of Oli Oakes from Alpine) with only James Vowles younger than him.

The learning curve of balancing all the challenges and demands of his position has no doubt been helped by the fact it’s a double-pronged leadership role, with the experience of CEO Peter Bayer allowing the two men to remain focused on their respective areas of responsibility.

“The relationship with Peter is brilliant. Honestly, it was easy from day one, because we knew each other from previous times,” Mekies said.

“But it’s equally fair to say that, a year down the line, it’s richer than what it was a year ago. We have two well-defined perimeters. We are both honest enough to know that there is so much to do in each other’s perimeters that the last thing you would like to do is go and have to spend the energy on the other guy’s perimeter.

“But, equally, we appreciate and know each other enough so that we know that, behind closed doors, we can get each other’s guidance on each other’s perimeters, confront ourselves as managers, and challenge ourselves in the decisions we are making.

“I don’t think it could be better than what it is now like. It’s a very unique leadership type that we have; I don’t see any other F1 team having a CEO and team principal at the same level, splitting perimeters. But it’s working extremely well. I cannot imagine how it could actually be better right now.”

Jovial and relaxed in style Mekies may be, but this external mellowness shouldn’t be interpreted as meaning he’s less determined or competitive than some of the more outwardly-intense characters on the grid.

The changes brought about in the organisation under Mekies and Bayer show a clear path forward has been determined and the intriguing question is whether, in another 18 months’ time, Racing Bulls is able to latch onto the top four teams or, at least, becoming a leading light in the upper midfield.

Such responsibility and command can sometimes change a person’s personality, but does Mekies believe becoming an F1 team boss has changed him in any way?

“I think it’s actually the other way around,” he said.

“Meaning that, the more you go up, the more you realise it’s only about the people you have with you, and that’s how we build our projects.

“We put our people at the centre of the projects. We try to make sure they are putting the best possible conditions that they can to just express their talents.

“Success is going to be based on how great the people you have are and how great the environment you put around them is. So all we do, all day, is try to pick the right people and try to make sure our people are put in the best conditions.

“I don’t think you need to change your personality as you go up. Actually, as you go up and as time flies, you just realise that it’s all about your people, and all you need to do is to treat your people well, from morning to night.

“I don’t believe it’s about leadership styles. I believe it’s about leadership. Then you can have a million different styles but what matters is that you try to put people in the best conditions.”

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