Red Bull locks in Laurent Mekies until 2031 and turns the page on Horner

An announcement made at home

No statement slipped out on a Friday night, no grand press conference. Team shareholder Mark Mateschitz broke the news to staff himself during a debrief at the Milton Keynes factory. Laurent Mekies keeps his dual role as team principal and CEO, now through the end of the 2031 season.

The symbolism matters. Red Bull has only had two bosses since entering F1, and the first, Christian Horner, ran the show for twenty years before being let go in July 2025. Mekies, who stepped across from Racing Bulls in the aftermath, looked every bit the emergency fix. This new deal moves him from crisis manager to builder.

Malaysia, Singapore: perfect timing

The timing is no accident. Red Bull is coming off two weekends that changed the mood in the garage: Max Verstappen won in the Sepang downpour, then followed up in Singapore by taking both the Sprint and the Grand Prix. Before that, the RB22 had endured a sluggish start to the season, well below the standards the team sets itself.

The 2026 challenge was anything but ordinary. For the first time in its history, Red Bull is racing with a power unit designed in its own workshops. Starting from scratch against manufacturers with decades of experience meant accepting some pain. The team now sits fourth in the constructors' championship, just seven points behind McLaren. The gap is closing, and fast.

Mekies made no secret of his mindset either: in his view, these recent wins are "only the beginning". It reads like a warning aimed at Mercedes and McLaren.

The puzzle is now complete

This extension wraps up a project that began over the summer. In August, Verstappen extended through 2030, ending months of speculation about a possible exit. Last month, Isack Hadjar was confirmed for 2027 alongside the Dutchman. All that was missing was the man tasked with holding it all together.

The shareholders' message is crystal clear. Mateschitz, Chalerm Yoovidhya and Oliver Mintzlaff, the group's head of projects and investments, all stressed stability. Mintzlaff summed it up by describing continuity at the top as a key ingredient for lasting success. After a 2025 season marked by internal turmoil and Horner's departure, that need for calm surprises no one.

Mekies, for his part, chose to share the spotlight. He singled out Pierre Waché, technical director on the chassis side, and Ben Hodgkinson, who heads Red Bull Powertrains. The chassis-engine partnership is presented as the backbone of the project, with several key hires expected for 2027.

Portrait of a low-key boss

The Frenchman is no showman. Having worked at Minardi, Toro Rosso, the FIA and then Ferrari, he built his career in the shadows of workshops and rulebooks before taking charge of Racing Bulls in early 2024. That engineer's, detail-driven background goes some way to explaining the calm he has brought back to Milton Keynes.

His record already speaks for itself. In 2025, Red Bull recovered to the point where Verstappen lost the title by just two points. In 2026, the team absorbed a difficult start without tearing itself apart in public, which was far from a given considering the climate of previous years.

Now comes the hard part: turning promise into results. With an in-house engine on the rise and the Mekies-Verstappen-Hadjar trio locked in, Red Bull has bought itself what it lacked most over the past two years: time. The real question is whether that stability will be enough to catch Mercedes before the 2030 regulations reshuffle the deck.