Laurent Mekies: « Racing Bulls is a team without a fixed location »

In an interview given to the Italian branch of Motorsport, Laurent Mekies, director of Racing Bulls, discussed the development of the team: a year ago, significant work was undertaken. “We invested in our new headquarters in Milton Keynes as well as in Faenza, and we have grown a lot,” Mekies proudly states.

The uniqueness of Racing Bulls and its consequences

Racing Bulls is the only team on the grid to be directly under the wing of another: Red Bull Racing. And this special status provides advantages but also disadvantages.

Regarding the advantages, Racing Bulls makes significant savings in terms of human resources as well as parts development. Part of the work is already started by Red Bull Racing.

« The benefits are clear: we don’t need to add staff to the 650 employees we already have, and we don’t have to invest in research and development for the gearbox and suspensions. Another advantage is receiving parts designed by a cutting-edge team, with the certainty that a top team executes them better than us, as we are not yet at that level. » It is a significant boost for a team in full development.

On the other hand, « it is difficult […] to precisely understand how and why certain solutions were chosen. » And it’s an important parameter for working peacefully, especially in Formula 1, where precision is crucial for achieving good race results. « But from Red Bull’s point of view, it makes sense that, when you have two teams in Formula 1, you try to share at least the few parts allowed by regulations. It is understandable that this approach is preferable to hiring a hundred additional people to manufacture components already designed by another team », concedes Mekies.

“It’s a complex process,” he insists about the parallel operation of Red Bull Racing. He highlights the communication difficulties that can arise due to the distance between two parts of the staff: “In this business, everything relies on people and communication between them, and this aspect is difficult to manage. We made an important choice: not to locate the departments in just one of the two facilities, whether it’s aerodynamics, design, or production. We opted for a model where each of these departments has staff both in Faenza and in Milton Keynes.”

So, if communication can prove to be challenging between teams working in different countries and within the same department, regardless of employees’ areas of expertise, employees can, in principle, choose which site to work at.

Greater freedom for employees

Among the advantages of this operating mode, the possibility for employees to choose between England and Italy clearly works in favor of Racing Bulls at the time of recruitment, or even for retaining its employees over time.

« We called this model “Location Free” and we chose it for a specific reason: the ability to recruit talent in both England and Italy. We have this opportunity, and to maximize it, we have extended it to all departments, recalls Laurent Mekies. « We can offer our employees the possibility to work either in Italy or England, which also helps us retain our staff ».

The link between Red Bull Racing and Racing Bulls

If these two teams remain very connected, Laurent Mekies wants to highlight the relative independence of Racing Bulls.

« People often talk about our collaboration with Red Bull, he notes. However, « Currently, VCARB has 650 employees, with departments dedicated to the study and design of all the components of the single-seater, except for the gearbox and suspensions, which we purchase from Red Bull. The core of the car – the aerodynamics, the layout, and many other parts, such as the cooling system – is designed in Faenza or in our center in England. »

In their facilities, engineers indeed work on simulation, vehicle mechanics, carbon, aerodynamics, and single-seater dynamics, and that means being a manufacturer.

The FIA’s decisions regarding wing flexibility

For Laurent Mekies, it is important to emphasize that he has a lot of respect for the work done by the FIA; it’s never easy, or perhaps even impossible, to find a solution that suits everyone. It’s always a compromise choice, he insists. He is all the more aware of this since he himself worked within the FIA as Safety Director and Deputy Race Director.

But he explains that as a smaller team, it is not something that helps us a lot, because teams at the bottom of the pack tend to build their front wings at the beginning of the year. Therefore, according to him, it is a bit late to take measures that might disadvantage the development of back-of-the-grid teams. Because if the FIA has already tightened the regulations concerning rear wings, starting from the Spanish Grand Prix, the flexibility of front wings will also be closely monitored.

Despite everything, Laurent Mekies explains that he is pleased something was done; there was a drift that needed to be stopped. As a reminder, Red Bull Racing reported suspicions to the FIA on this matter, and checks were carried out at Ferrari and McLaren.

Assessment of his first year as director, goals for the future

After several years at Toro Rosso, Laurent Mekies worked within the FIA, then joined Scuderia Ferrari, which he left in 2024 to take the helm of the team formerly known as Toro Rosso, Racing Bulls, in order to lead it. He says he is very enthusiastic about the team’s future. A year later, I can say that the project I am part of is fantastic. The Red Bull family gives you a true sense of belonging, but at the same time, they have given us great freedom in management. We have no constraints to build what they asked for, namely a team capable of positioning itself just behind the top teams.

Despite all the major changes to the team’s structure, Racing Bulls has not yet reached the stage where all this work translates into lap time. […] It will take us another six to nine months for all these efforts to translate into performance, he estimates. These difficulties are due to the fact that the midfield has made great progress.

There is still work to be done for this team without a fixed location, but the efforts will pay off, according to Laurent Mekies.