Mekies Quietly Rebuilds Red Bull One Year On

• Laurent Mekies marks one year in charge of Red Bull with the team still fourth in the Constructors’ Championship
• Around 130 people joined Red Bull in the first four months of 2026 as departments were reshaped under Mekies
• Isack Hadjar has emerged as one of the toughest team mates Max Verstappen has had, going back to Daniel Ricciardo in 2018

Laurent Mekies has completed a year in charge of Red Bull, having replaced Christian Horner last summer after the Briton had led the team from its foundation in 2005. Twelve months on, Red Bull sit exactly where they did when Mekies took over: fourth in the Constructors’ Championship, chasing Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren rather than fighting them for wins.

The points totals look similar too. Red Bull scored 172 points across the first 12 Grands Prix of last year, an average of 14.3 per race, and were 288 points behind leaders McLaren at that stage. This year they have 128 points from nine rounds, an average of 14.2, but the gap to the top of the table has closed to 205 points behind new leaders Mercedes. Set those two numbers side by side and Red Bull look like a team that has barely moved in 12 months. That does not capture what has happened behind the scenes.

Mekies is 49 and describes himself as a people person, someone who believes the strength of a team comes down to the people inside it. He spent the second half of last year, his first six months in the job, getting to know the operation rather than making immediate, sweeping changes. That patience shaped almost everything that followed.

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A Deliberate Bet on the Old Car

When Mekies stepped up, having spent a year and a half leading sister team Racing Bulls, he found Red Bull at a low point after a difficult start to that season. Rather than pivot immediately to the new regulations arriving in 2026, he chose to keep developing the old car all the way to the end of last year, even as rival teams shifted their full attention to the next chassis and power unit rules.

He knew that decision would hurt Red Bull at the start of this year, and possibly for a season or two after that, but he judged it the right call given the team’s long-term needs.

The results backed him up. Max Verstappen won six of Red Bull’s final nine races last year, cutting a 104-point deficit to McLaren down to just two points by the end of the season. Had Verstappen won the title in that final race, the decision would have looked inspired to everyone watching from outside. Instead, Red Bull opened 2026 exactly as Mekies had expected: on the back foot, with a car built for the new rules that started life underdeveloped compared to the opposition. It took the closing months of last season to buy this year’s slow start, and Mekies knew that trade before he made it.

A Wave of New Arrivals

Pushing development of the old car to the end of last season gave Mekies a clear look at which parts of the operation were working and which were not. He could see which departments needed strengthening, and which people needed to change. Around 130 people joined Red Bull in the first four months of this year alone as he acted on what he had learned.

On the technical side, Chief Designer Craig Skinner departed after 20 years with the team. Ben Waterhouse moved across from Racing Bulls to become Chief Performance and Design Engineer, reporting to Technical Director Pierre Wache, while Andrea Landi joined as Head of Performance after time at Ferrari and Racing Bulls. Each move was a direct response to a gap Mekies had identified in his first six months on the job.

A new wind tunnel will not come online until next year, and it will still need to be calibrated once it does, so the first car to benefit fully will be the 2028 challenger. That leaves Red Bull working with existing tools for now, including a car that has suffered rear wing failures in back-to-back Grands Prix. Time is not on the team’s side in that sense, but the mood inside the building is still said to be positive, built on a belief that everyone knows what needs to happen to get back to the front of the grid.

Hadjar Passes an Early Test

The second Red Bull seat has given Mekies plenty to be encouraged about. Isack Hadjar has settled well into his first season alongside Verstappen, finishing inside the top six in each of the last five Grands Prix to sit eighth in the Drivers’ Championship, 24 points behind his team mate.

For most of this year Hadjar has been around a quarter of a second off Verstappen’s pace, a smaller gap than most of the four-time champion’s previous team mates have managed. Sergio Perez and Pierre Gasly both won races as Verstappen’s team mate in the years before Hadjar arrived, which makes the Frenchman’s start an impressive one even across a sample of only nine races. Among Verstappen’s team mates going back to Daniel Ricciardo in 2018, Hadjar’s start ranks as one of the toughest challenges the Dutchman has faced.

“Certainly big picture for us is that it is a step forward every time he goes out with the car,” Mekies said of Hadjar. “That is positive for the rest of the season.”

That comment says as much about the second seat as it does about Hadjar. A driver who keeps closing the gap on a four-time champion, race after race, gives a team principal one less problem to solve while he works through everything else on his list.

Verstappen’s Future Still Unresolved

Things are less settled on the other side of the garage. Verstappen’s future at Red Bull remains open, just as it was when Mekies took charge a year ago. The Dutchman wants to win, and this year’s car has not let him do that yet.

With McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes all settled on their driver line-ups for next year, Verstappen’s options elsewhere are limited. Staying at Red Bull while the team fights its way back to the front looks like his most realistic path for now, and keeping him there through that fight is one of the biggest tasks facing Mekies in the months ahead.

Mekies took over a team at a low point and chose the slower, harder route back, betting that a season lost early would pay off later. Twelve months on, the table says Red Bull have stood still. The people making the changes inside the building would tell a different story.

A year into the job, Mekies has changed far more about Red Bull than fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship suggests. Whether that work shows up higher in the standings is what the rest of 2026 will decide.

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Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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