Laurent Mekies
Mekies in 2022
Personal information
Born (1977-04-28) 28 April 1977 (age 46)
Tours, Centre-Val de Loire, France
Alma materLoughborough University
OccupationEngineer
Years active2001–present
Sport
SportFormula One
PositionTeam principal
TeamScuderia AlphaTauri

Laurent Mekies (born 28 April 1977) is a French engineer who currently works as the team principal of the RB Formula One Team.

Career

Mekies graduated from Loughborough University after obtaining a master's degree from the École supérieure des techniques aéronautiques et de construction automobile in Paris. In 2000, he started his career at Asiatech in Formula Three before entering Formula One, working for Arrows. He switched to Minardi in the following years, where he worked as the race engineer for Mark Webber, Justin Wilson, Zsolt Baumgartner and Christijan Albers.

When the team was acquired by the Austrian energy drink maker Red Bull and renamed as Scuderia Toro Rosso at the end of 2005, he was promoted to be the team's chief engineer.[1]

Mekies left the Faenza-based team to join the FIA in 2014 as safety director and was appointed F1 deputy race director in 2017.[2] He moved to Scuderia Ferrari in September 2018 as sporting director.[3] He has been in charge of the Track and Performance department since 2019. In January 2021, he was appointed as Deputy Team Principal and Racing Director of Scuderia Ferrari. [4]

Mekies will be replacing Franz Tost as team principal of Scuderia AlphaTauri at an unspecified date.[5] On 27 July 2023, it was announced that Mekies would leave his job as Racing Director for Ferrari at the end of the week, not being in attendance for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps as a result. Diego Ioverno will take on part of Mekies' duties as sporting director.[6]

References

  1. ^ Cutler, Andrew (29 May 2012). "Laurent Mekies". f1network.net. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  2. ^ Szymkiewicz, Mateusz (5 July 2016). "Herbie Blash ustąpi z roli zastępcy dyrektora wyścigów po sezonie 2016". f1wm.pl (in Polish). Archived from the original on 27 June 2020. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  3. ^ Piórkowski, Nataniel (14 March 2018). "Laurent Mekies odejdzie z FIA i dołączy do Ferrari". f1wm.pl (in Polish). Archived from the original on 27 June 2020. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  4. ^ "Laurent Mekies". Ferrari. Retrieved 25 June 2020.
  5. ^ Boxall-Legge, Jake (Apr 27, 2023). "Ferrari's Mekies to replace Tost as AlphaTauri F1 principal". www.motorsport.com.
  6. ^ Cleeren, Filip (27 July 2023). "Ferrari appoints new F1 sporting director as Mekies departs". www.autosport.com.


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