Laurent Mekies isn’t blinking. Thrust into Red Bull’s top job after Christian Horner’s abrupt exit, the Frenchman is publicly unfazed by inheriting a team that’s no longer the class of the field—and that’s very much the point he wants to make.
Red Bull’s 2025 hasn’t looked like the juggernaut of the past few years. Max Verstappen has still found two wins, but against McLaren’s relentless strike rate, a fifth straight drivers’ crown for the Dutchman already feels like a long shot. Hungary underlined the wobble: Verstappen salvaged ninth, Yuki Tsunoda went home empty-handed, and the noise around Milton Keynes only got louder.
Mekies, promoted from leading Red Bull’s sister outfit, has spent his first weeks walking the corridors and setting a tone. This isn’t a man promising quick fixes. He’s framing Red Bull’s reality with the blunt metric of a top team: you either win or you don’t. That, he says, is the expectation that drives every department, every weekend. And inside the factory, he insists, that mentality hasn’t changed.
He’s also keen to keep the focus on people over ego. Don’t expect a vanity project or a dramatic rebrand of the operation. Mekies talks about meeting teams, mapping strengths and weaknesses, and removing blockers that slow competitive gains. Not stamping his identity, as he puts it—accelerating theirs. In short: the car gets quicker when the organization does.
The backdrop is hardly simple. Horner’s removal ended a two-decade run that built modern Red Bull. The exact reasons haven’t been made public, but the parent company wanted change, and it wanted it now. Mekies steps in as team boss and CEO while the organization continues a recruitment drive across the race team and the Powertrains arm. His voice will matter in who comes next.
There’s no attempt to dress up the present. Mekies admits this came out of the blue and that enjoyment can wait; right now it’s full immersion. But he leans on something Red Bull still has in abundance: experience, talent, and the muscle memory of winning. Off-track calm, he believes, will translate into on-track steps.
This season may be about containment more than conquest. The real reset arrives with the 2026 rules, and Mekies knows his work now is about positioning Red Bull to hit that window hard. For a team that’s built on dominating eras, not moments, that’s a familiar target. The message from the new man in charge is clear: don’t mistake quiet for complacent.
