There’s a second backstage at Net Summit when a member of the manufacturing crew — simply twice the dimensions of Laurent Mekies — wraps a beefy arm across the Oracle Purple Bull Racing CEO’s shoulder and steers him towards the soundboard to retrieve his telephone for a selfie. Most executives main 2,000-person organizations would bristle on the informality, even from a superfan. Mekies as a substitute smiles, his demeanor unchanged as he accommodates the starstruck crew member.
It’s a small second however maybe a revealing one about Mekies who, simply 4 months in the past, grew to become solely the second particular person to steer Purple Bull Racing in its 20-year historical past.
“The primary feeling is one among being privileged, being honored, to instantly be a part of such an unimaginable staff,” Mekies later tells me onstage in French-accented English. “This staff has been successful greater than anybody else in Components One within the final twenty years. After which instantly you’re a part of it.”
“Abruptly” isn’t an overstatement. As broadly reported, the wholly sudden name got here in July. Christian Horner, the outspoken government who had led Purple Bull since its entry into F1 in 2005, was out. Mekies, who had been operating the staff’s sister outfit, Racing Bulls, for simply over a 12 months, was tapped to step up.
Mekies was an inconceivable alternative in some methods. The place Horner delights within the media highlight and gamesmanship that defines F1 staff principals, Mekies spent a lot of his profession within the engineering trenches. His strategy to successful displays that technical background, too; he sees efficiency positive factors not simply in aerodynamics and tire compounds, however in eliminating friction from workflows and processes.
That philosophy extends to the staff’s partnerships. Take 1Password, the cybersecurity firm whose CEO, David Faugno, sits beside Mekies and me on the Net Summit stage. Faugno took over his personal iconic model 4 months in the past — the identical week as Mekies.
The partnership between a cybersecurity firm and an F1 staff would possibly look like an odd match. Safety, in any case, often means friction. Passwords to verify, techniques to authenticate, workflows that sluggish individuals down. In F1, the place thousandths of a second matter, that’s unacceptable.
However that’s precisely why Mekies sees 1Password as integral to Purple Bull’s aggressive edge. “Our individuals need to handle and log in and sign off of complicated techniques — aerodynamics, car dynamics on the observe, again on the manufacturing unit, on the simulator, within the wind tunnel . . . We go right now sooner on this seamless login and logout of our individuals from one system to a different than what we had been doing with out the security degree.”
It’s a small aggressive benefit, however in F1, small benefits compound. “You’re looking after the tiniest aggressive benefit, one after the opposite,” Mekies notes. “Our tech genius, our individuals — they’re difficult us daily in regards to the noise that’s considerably unavoidable for a big staff. With 1Password, now we have this form of reply the place we cut back the noise, improve the time for the core enterprise, and that’s basically the place the efficiency comes from.”
From engineer to CEO
At 48, Mekies has seen Components 1 from practically each angle. After finding out at ESTACA, an engineering faculty in Paris, and Loughborough College within the U.Okay., he began in Components 3 in 2000 earlier than crossing into F1 with a British racing staff referred to as Arrows in 2001. He then joined Minardi, an Italian staff, in 2003 as a race engineer. When Purple Bull purchased the struggling outfit and remodeled it into Toro Rosso in 2006 — the concept was to create a junior staff to develop younger drivers like Max Verstappen for Purple Bull Racing — Mekies was promoted to chief engineer.
Mekies stayed for eight years earlier than transferring on to develop into security director on the Fédération Internationale de l’Car (FIA), the rulemaker for Components 1 and different motorsport collection worldwide. There, he reportedly championed the titanium security machine that’s mounted above the cockpit of Components 1 automobiles to guard the driving force’s head — the “halo” system. Then it was on to Ferrari as deputy race director, and 5 years later, again to Purple Bull’s junior racing staff (renamed Racing Bulls in 2024).
Mekies brings a breadth of expertise to the position, in brief. What he doesn’t deliver — not but, at the least — is lots of ego. When Verstappen received the 2025 Italian Grand Prix at Monza in September in what grew to become the quickest race in F1 historical past, reporters requested Mekies about his contribution to the victory. His reply was self-effacing: “I’ve zero contribution.” When the reporters laughed, he added, “I’m not kidding.”
Once I ask about that second on stage at Net Summit, Mekies shrugs. “All we do as leaders is put our individuals in place to have the ability to categorical their abilities. So it is vitally a lot their win.”
Mekies sees his position in another way than his high-profile predecessor, actually. He isn’t intentionally attempting to “lead from behind.” As a substitute, he tells me onstage that he doesn’t “assume the strategy issues. I don’t assume it’s management type. You can see each doable type in management. I believe what issues in management is take care of the individuals and a care-for-the-company tradition.”
Certainly, whereas Mekies might actually bathe consideration on his star driver (Mekies needs to retain him in any case), he’s extra centered on the collective. “Your first ideas are for the two,000 individuals again within the factories who’ve by no means given up on this season,” he says. “It takes an amazing quantity of vitality, of firm tradition, to maintain that motivation and that preventing spirit.”
Humility doesn’t imply enjoying it protected, by the way in which. The Monza win additionally validated a considerably shocking resolution: to maintain pushing on the 2025 automotive fairly than abandoning it for subsequent 12 months’s growth. “We weren’t completely happy about the place the automotive efficiency had been firstly of this 12 months and up till the center of this 12 months,” Mekies tells me. “We determined to press on a bit extra with 2025. We didn’t really feel that we might merely flip the web page and have wishful excited about how all the things can be higher subsequent 12 months.”
It was a dangerous name. With utterly new rules coming in 2026 — new chassis guidelines, new energy unit rules — most groups had already shifted assets to subsequent 12 months’s automotive. However Mekies felt his staff wanted to grasp what had gone flawed earlier than they might transfer ahead. “We felt we needed to unravel what had not been working,” he says. “We maybe pushed a bit greater than among the competitors. And fortunately, it gave us this turnaround in kind.”
Now the staff heads into winter with much less growth time than its rivals, “however with much more belief in our instruments, in our methodologies, in our course of,” Mekies says.
Driving ahead
If Mekies’ 2025 turnaround was dangerous, 2026 represents one thing else: a “loopy journey,” as Mekies describes how Purple Bull is constructing its personal energy unit for the primary time, in partnership with Ford. (It has relied on Honda-based engines since 2019.) “For Oracle Purple Bull Racing, there aren’t any different phrases to explain subsequent 12 months aside from as a loopy problem. That’s how large it’s for us.”
For a way of what the staff is taking over, right here’s how Mekies describes it on stage: “We’re going to do our personal energy unit with the assist from Ford, and we’re going to compete towards individuals which have been manufacturing Components One engines for greater than 90 years. It’s the form of loopy degree that solely Purple Bull can do. We’ve determined to create in a single day services in the course of a subject in Milton Keynes [a large town about 50 miles northwest of London] within the U.Okay. from zero — get the constructing, get the dynos in [which are massive, sophisticated test rigs], rent 600 individuals, attempt to get them to work collectively, ultimately attempt to get an engine and get it in control to succeed in the observe.”
Can he promise Verstappen a championship-winning automotive subsequent 12 months? Once I ask Mekies, he solutions straightaway. “We might be foolish to assume that we simply go in there and are going to be on the proper degree immediately. This isn’t going to occur,” he says. “However we take it the Purple Bull approach. We take it with all of the high-risk, high-gain strategy that we cherish.”
He has purpose for optimism. Sitting third on this 12 months’s F1 staff standings, simply behind Mercedes, Purple Bull has a practical shot at overtaking them for second place within the ultimate three races of this 12 months’s season. It’s a far cry from the dominance Purple Bull loved in recent times, however given how the season began, it will signify a serious restoration.
Backstage earlier than our dialog, as make-up artists powder us for the stage lights, I ask Mekies in regards to the stress of these ultimate races. His reply is often methodical.
“We at all times say that we take it race by race. In order that’s what we’re going to do within the subsequent three races,” he tells me. “You need to flip up on the racetrack, put the automotive in the correct window,” that means the slim vary of situations the place a automotive performs optimally, “and struggle for the win.”
It’s “extremely troublesome to struggle at that degree,” he continues, “however everybody in Milton Keynes has been doing such an amazing job to show the automotive round and to present us a aggressive bundle for the tip of the season.”
Within the meantime, he insists that he’s not wanting on the factors tables or the what-ifs. “We don’t have a look at the numbers. We all know there’s a lot taking place within the [F1 team standings], however we solely have a look at it race by race.”
That’s the “solely factor we do,” he says, describing Purple Bull’s mission. “Chasing lap instances.”
