{"id":21370,"date":"2025-07-24T20:37:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T20:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/21370\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T20:37:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T20:37:07","slug":"who-is-laurent-mekies-meet-red-bull-racings-new-f1-team-principal-and-ceo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/21370\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is Laurent Mekies? Meet Red Bull Racing’s new F1 team principal and CEO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Red Bull Racing are known for being ruthless with drivers, but it’s been a while since the Formula 1<\/a> team axed a team principal.<\/p>\n

That changed in early July, when Red Bull parted ways with Christian Horner after a 20-year stint in the top job.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Laurent Mekies has since been drafted in as the F1 outfit’s new team principal and CEO.<\/p>\n

Here’s what you need to know about the Frenchman.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Who will drive for Cadillac F1?<\/a><\/p>\n

Laurent Mekies age<\/p>\n

Mekies was born on April 28, 1977.<\/p>\n

He is 48\u00a0years old.<\/p>\n

Laurent Mekies nationality, birthplace<\/p>\n

Mekies was born in Tours, France.<\/p>\n

The Frenchman studied mechanical engineering at the prestigious engineering school ESTACA in Paris.<\/p>\n

He then moved to the United Kingdom to complete a master’s degree in automotive engineering at Loughborough University.<\/p>\n

Laurent Mekies career, previous roles<\/p>\n

Mekies secured his first motorsport job in 2000 when he joined Formula 3 outfit Asiatech as an engineer.<\/p>\n

The following year, he made the leap to Formula 1 with Arrows.<\/p>\n

In 2003, he moved to Minardi, where he worked as the race engineer for the likes of\u00a0Mark Webber and Zsolt Baumgartner.<\/p>\n

Minardi was then acquired by Red Bull and renamed\u00a0Scuderia Toro Rosso before Mekies was promoted to be the team’s chief engineer.<\/p>\n

After almost a decade in that role, the Frenchman joined the sport’s governing body \u2013 the FIA \u2013 as safety director in 2014.<\/p>\n

He was appointed\u00a0F1 deputy race director in 2017.<\/p>\n

A move to Ferrari came in 2018, where he became their sporting director. This was followed by an appointment as the Italian team’s racing director.<\/p>\n

Mekies made the step up to team principal when he joined RB \u2013 and returned to the Red Bull family \u2013 at the start of the 2024 campaign.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He replaced Horner as the Red Bull team principal and CEO in July.<\/p>\n

Why did Red Bull sack Christian Horner?<\/p>\n

It’s not entirely clear why Red Bull parted ways with Horner.<\/p>\n

The decision to change their team principal mid-way through a season suggests that multiple factors were at play, however.<\/p>\n

“The heart of the team, [Max] Verstappen, has more than tinkered with the idea of leaving,” Sporting News’ Ben McCarthy wrote following the move.<\/p>\n

“The development path is not yielding improvement, and faith has been lost across various factions of the board.<\/p>\n

“A recent change in ownership structure has been made, and the team’s second-seat situation has been a mess.”<\/p>\n

Horner’s dismissal came one year after an internal investigation into\u00a0sexual misconduct allegations from a former Red Bull Racing employee.<\/p>\n

Two separate investigations dismissed the allegations, which Horner has always denied.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Bull Racing are known for being ruthless with drivers, but it’s been a while since the Formula…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-21370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}