How Red Bull’s new boss handled ‘complete reset’ after stepping into Christian Horner role

Laurent Mekies has opened up on the challenge of changing mindset from Racing Bulls to Red Bull in between two races during the F1 2025 season.

Mekies was suddenly promoted to the CEO and team principal roles at the senior Red Bull team after the British Grand Prix, with the parent company opting to axe Christian Horner after 20 years.

Laurent Mekies: Red Bull switch needed a ‘complete reset’

Mekies had been team boss at Racing Bulls, the sister Red Bull team, since the start of the F1 2024 season, having spent six months on gardening leave after leaving the role of Ferrari’s sporting director in the middle of 2023.

Mekies had formed a strong partnership with Racing Bulls’ CEO Peter Bayer, but was abruptly given a promotion to the senior team to replace Horner when Red Bull GmbH opted to remove the British executive from his roles.

Suddenly thrust into a leadership role at the front-running team, Mekies’ arrival coincided with an uptick in performance from the Milton Keynes-based squad, although it’s worth noting that the upgrades brought to the car after this point were still initially approved under Horner’s watch.

By season’s end, with the Red Bull being continuously improved against a static McLaren MCL39, Max Verstappen became a championship challenger but, ultimately, lost out by two points to Lando Norris.

It had been a remarkable turnaround in fortune since the middle of the season, with Red Bull unlocking the consistency of the RB21; the team had shown the car had inherent performance throughout the first half of the year, but struggled to get it into a peak performance window on every occasion.

Mekies has long pointed to how he believes his contribution to Red Bull’s efforts this year have been minimal to “zero”, and said he had needed a mental reset of his own to adjust to the very different experience of helming Red Bull after 18 months or so at Racing Bulls.

“I think you really have to make a conscious effort not to refer back to Racing Bulls because of how different the projects were,” he told select media, including PlanetF1.com, at the end of the F1 2025 season.

“So that effort needed to be conscious, then after there has been a huge amount of support from the team to help me get into it.

“They’ve been extremely welcoming, extremely open-minded, and extremely willing to share their approaches.

“What was working, what was not working, but, in terms of jumping in, I think yes, from Racing Bulls, there needed to be a complete reset.

“So perhaps, in some respect, there are more similarities with the Ferrari era in terms of the size of the team, the pressure of fighting at the front, and the chassis plus engine.

“But there again, the approach has been of ‘let’s not try to get reference points of the past’.

“Let’s just try to get to know as many people as possible, as fast as we can, and then have a grasp of the dynamics and where we can support.”

Mekies reiterated his firm belief that his involvement in the second half of the F1 2025 has had “no impact” on the team’s level of performance.

“I still mean it!” he said.

“I think it’s an outstanding group that never gives up, we only want to do pure racing, and all we have done together is concentrate on pure racing, and that’s it.

“I guess the job is to protect the group in such a way that they can concentrate on what they are so good at, which is having the technical discussions as the difficult ones, but doing it in an environment where you can have difficult discussions, because all we are seeking to achieve is to get the car faster.

“I think the group is very tight and has a fantastic atmosphere. We have our difficult moments. We have our difficult conversations because not everything is black and white. We don’t have an answer for everything.

“But you see that the fire inside is not a fire to go against the teammates. It’s a fire to get that car faster. Huge credit needs to go to them for what, in any case, has been achieved this year because it has been a turnaround of some magnitude.”

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Laurent Mekies: Red Bull needed to get to bottom of RB21 project

Mekies has previously spoken about the possibility of potentially sacrificing some initial lap time with the 2026 RB22 car, having kept up steady development in the upgrades to the RB21.

With McLaren switching off development of its car, the sustained development of the RB21 takes away financial and operational resources from Red Bull for the new car, but Mekies has pointed more towards the opportunity side of that opportunity cost.

It was imperative for Red Bull to understand its tools more, unlock the performance of the RB21 to gain comprehension of its correlation; this correlation having been a stumbling block for the team over the previous two years.

“I think it became quite obvious to us that we didn’t want to simply turn the page [on RB21] and have the wishful thinking that, whilst the ’25 car had not been at the required level to fight for the title, we would then be okay doing so in ’26,” he said.

“We didn’t want to go down that route. We wanted to go to the root; we needed to get to the bottom of that project.

“We needed to understand why it’s not performing because, fundamentally, we’ll be using the same tools, the same process, the same methodologies next year, and yes, we may lose some time in doing so, but we didn’t want to go for the wishful thinking.

“So, was it difficult? No, it was something we have been very, very convinced of very early on.”

Certainly, while there are no answers yet as to how this approach will pay off for 2026, Mekies is convinced that the team has regained some of the confidence it had been missing.

“I think certainly, to stay on the human aspect as a group, it’s a group that ultimately has achieved an unbelievable season.

“It’s certainly put the group even more compact, even more tight together. That gives us the right approach, the right environment and energy for next year.

“Does it make us feel that the car is going to be faster or slower than the opposition? No, honestly, no.

“But I think, as a group, in the way we operate, in the way we accept the challenge, in the way we want to move forward, this is helpful, because it’s certainly giving us a lot of confirmation about the quality of our people.”

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