Laurent Mekies ‘not a magician’ as Red Bull F1 2026 prediction made

Red Bull has been urged not to put too much pressure on Laurent Mekies as he settles into his new roles as team boss and CEO.

Following the axing of Christian Horner from his leadership roles at Red Bull Racing, his successor, Laurent Mekies, is settling into life overseeing an expected front-running team.

Guenther Steiner: Red Bull wanted to reorganise

Horner was removed from his operational duties at Red Bull two days after the British Grand Prix, with parent company Red Bull GmbH replacing him with former Racing Bulls team boss Laurent Mekies – himself a hire overseen by Horner within the Red Bull organisation at the end of 2023.

This week, PlanetF1.com revealed Red Bull has removed Horner as a director of Red Bull Racing, Red Bull Powertrains, Red Bull Advanced Technologies and Red Bull Advanced Services, as well as the Red Bull Technology holding company.

However, while Mekies has been given control of the race team, he has not been appointed director for any of the aforementioned companies, with Red Bull GmbH’s HR director, Stefan Salzer, appointed as a director at the F1 team and for the holding company.

One man familiar with what it feels like to be removed from a long-term F1 team leadership role is Guenther Steiner, who was a contemporary of Horner for 10 years as he led the burgeoning Haas squad through its inception and onto the grid for the first decade of competition.

Steiner parted ways with Haas at the start of 2024, although he has maintained an active presence in the F1 paddock as a widely-regarded pundit and broadcaster.

Asked whether he believes Red Bull should have focused on continuity and allowed Horner to remain at the helm of the team he had led to all of its world championship wins over the past two decades, Steiner said, “The unrest within the team was nothing new. It had been building up for over a year and a half, with new issues cropping up all the time. And at some point, the decision was made: it’s time to restore calm.

“The team’s performance is no longer what it used to be, Max Verstappen is unhappy, and of course, you want to keep him happy.

“That’s why Red Bull wants to reorganise.”

Shortly after the confirmation of Horner’s axing came reassurance from Verstappen that he is committed to staying with Milton Keynes for the F1 2026 championship. However, question marks over just how competitive Red Bull will be under the new regulation set, in which the company also enters its first F1 power unit after the establishment of Red Bull Powertrains, means that all eyes will be on Verstappen’s future career decisions for 2027.

Overseeing the attempts to get back to the top will be Mekies, who is yet to prove himself at this level in Formula 1, having only become a team boss for the first time in 2024 – his previous experience being that of an engineer at Toro Rosso, and being sporting director at Ferrari.

There’s no doubt that Red Bull faces a steep hill back to the forefront of F1, with the RB21 having gone off the boil, and Mekies having to find his feet in leadership of his new team just a few months out from a major regulations change.

It’s this steep learning curve upon which Mekies is embarking that should mean he isn’t put under immediate pressure to succeed, Steiner said.

“I just hope they don’t put too much pressure on Laurent Mekies. He’s not a magician, after all,” he said.

“It can take years [to rebuild].”

It’s believed that, shortly before his firing, Horner had indicated internally that the path back to the top for Red Bull could take upwards of three years, and Steiner said Mekies will bear the brunt of the responsibility to find the right people to help rebuild the organisation’s competitiveness.

“Red Bull is currently on a downward trajectory rather than an upward one. Mekies has a huge job ahead of him,” he said.

“Good people have left and spread out to other teams. Now he has to try to attract new top talent, and that’s difficult.

“What’s more, Red Bull is building its own engine with Ford. That’s a huge project.”

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Predicting how things may play out over the next 12 months, he said, “It’s definitely not going to run smoothly in the first year. They’ll be among the front-runners in 2026, but not quite at the very front. They’ll still be some way behind the leaders.”

While Steiner has pointed out all the hurdles facing Mekies, the Frenchman himself has revealed he isn’t daunted by the extent of the new career challenge he’s facing.

“We don’t underestimate what is ahead of us. A top team has a target to win, and the biggest difference with the competition in the midfield is that, at every race weekend, you come back and there is only one answer: did you win or did you not?” he said, in response to a question from PlanetF1.com after the Hungarian Grand Prix.

“That sets the level of expectation of everyone, also the level of pushing that you need to apply to every single sector to compete. So we enjoy that. Red Bull Racing enjoys that.

“If you walk into the factory, you will find people that are only there to win and and it’s a very strong feeling, of course.

“Resilience is important in this sport, and you get weekends like this one, where you feel the world is not going the way you would like it to be.

“But, again, there are so many talents, so many skills, so much experience in the team that we all very well know, outside of the noise of the race track, we very well know that we will make steps, thanks to talent like that.

“So no, it is not overwhelming. It’s a sentiment that we all went through more often than not, and I’m sure it will be the fuel for the future success of the team.”

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