Mekies calls Red Bull’s 2026 engine push “as crazy as it gets” — and warns parity with Ferrari and Mercedes won’t come overnight
Laurent Mekies didn’t try to sell a fairytale. Red Bull’s new team principal, freshly in the hot seat after Christian Horner’s summer exit, says expecting the first Red Bull Powertrains-Ford unit to match Ferrari and Mercedes from day one in 2026 would be “silly.” That’s not defeatism — it’s realism in a sport where power unit know‑how is hoarded like gold and earned over decades.
“An Everest to climb,” is how Toto Wolff framed the challenge for Red Bull. Mekies didn’t disagree. “It’s as crazy as it gets to take the decision to do your own power unit,” he said at Monza. “These guys have been doing it for 90 years or something like that, so it would be silly from our side to think we’re going to come here and, right from the start, be at Ferrari’s or Mercedes’ level.”
Red Bull is about to find out how steep that mountain really is. For 2026, the sport flicks the switch to 50% electric energy deployment, fully sustainable fuels and active aerodynamics. The engine rooms will hum differently. The sums change. And the margins — both for glory and disaster — get thinner.
This is Red Bull’s first go at a power unit bearing its own name. The Milton Keynes operation built Red Bull Powertrains from scratch; it’s now tied to Ford, while current supplier Honda heads to Aston Martin for the new ruleset. Earlier this year, Horner called the in-house project “by far the biggest challenge” the team has faced since it joined the grid in 2005. Weeks before his departure following the British Grand Prix, he even jabbed that it would be “embarrassing” for the legacy manufacturers if Red Bull nailed it at the first attempt.
Horner’s gone; the task remains. Mekies, now both chief executive and team principal, is leaning into the scale of it rather than hiding behind bravado. “It’s being set up the Red Bull way – at the maximum possible level,” he said. “We take it step by step. We are trying to ramp up as quickly as possible – both the PU and the structure that goes around the PU: the people, the infrastructure. We expect a year with a lot of hard work, a lot of sleepless nights next year to try to get to the right level.”
The industry chatter hasn’t exactly calmed nerves. A springtime whisper suggested most of the 2026 manufacturers — Red Bull-Ford, Mercedes, Ferrari, Honda and newcomer Audi — had hit turbulence with development. One unnamed outfit was even said to be in a bind over a biofuel route that diverged from the rest. None of that will be confirmed until the FIA’s dyno numbers and the first proper runs speak for themselves, but nobody’s cruising through this rule change.
If there’s a team with a blueprint for getting it right, it’s Mercedes. The Brackley group emerged from the last major engine reset in 2014 like a sledgehammer, taking eight straight Constructors’ crowns and seven Drivers’ titles in the hybrid era’s opening decade. The paddock assumes their 2026 homework is already stacked and color‑coded.
That doesn’t mean Red Bull is walking into the dark. Few organizations in F1 iterate and integrate like this one, and the company’s history of betting big on ambitious programmes — then sharpening them fast — is the reason it’s now an institution rather than a disruptor. The trick in 2026 will be stitching together the combustion and electrical sides under the new split, managing energy deployment with active aero, and doing it reliably. On day one, that’s a tall order for anyone, even if your campus postcode starts with MK.
Mekies’ tone, then, fits. It’s confident without chest‑thumping, ambitious without pretending there’s a shortcut. “We’re not going to put a number on where we think we’ll be,” he said. “But we know we’re starting with a mountain to climb.”
The sport is better for it. If Red Bull hits the ground at 80% of Mercedes or Ferrari, the development race could be ferocious. If it’s closer than that, we might be staring at a new arms race across chassis and software to unlock the active aero and energy trade-offs. If it’s further away, the season becomes a test of whether Red Bull can compress an engine learning curve in months that took others years.
Either way, 2026 won’t be decided by slogans. Red Bull chose the hard road on purpose. It’s the Red Bull way. Now comes the altitude. Bring warm clothes. And a sherpa.
