Laurent Mekies already identified one of Christian Horner’s biggest failings when he was working for Racing Bulls

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Laurent Mekies’ task at Red Bull has been complicated by the timing of his arrival. Rather than joining in the off-season, he’s started work exactly halfway through the 2025 campaign.

With both championships likely a write-off, Red Bull could perhaps have waited until the end of the season to axe Horner. But amid uncertainty over the future of Max Verstappen and growing internal tensions, they took abrupt action.

The good news for Mekies is that there is at least a three-week interval between the British and Belgian Grands Prix – an unusually long break within the season. After the back-to-back at Spa and the Hungaroring, the calendar will then pause for the summer break.

Red Bull will hold off on making a judgement on Mekies, given that 2025 development plans will be virtually finalised and next year’s car has already taken shape. But he does have time to put an initial imprint on the Milton Keynes outfit.

Laurent Mekies has a plan to address Red Bull’s Friday set-up woes

According to FUnoAnalisiTecnica, Mekies’ first focus is on Red Bull’s methodology. He’s identified a major problem watching from afar at Racing Bulls.

Red Bull have repeatedly struggled in Friday practice this season after entering the weekend with an ill-judged set-up. The previous race at Silverstone was a good example – Verstappen was 10th in FP1 and remained half a second off the pace in FP2.

As the team have done numerous times this season, they turned it around overnight, and the Dutchman was able to snatch pole position with a radical low-downforce set-up. But Mekies feels that the poor practice performances are putting ‘a lot’ of unnecessary pressure on the team.

‘To that end’, he’s changing how Red Bull use the simulator in the build-up to a weekend. There has been ‘a lot of effort’ to implement his new blueprint before the race in Belgium.

Laurent Mekies faced with upset employees on his first day at Red Bull

Development driver Sebastian Buemi, formerly of Toro Rosso, says Red Bull will miss Horner’s ‘political’ nous after the change of regime. But Mekies is a veteran of the paddock, having also worked for Minardi, Ferrari and the FIA.

While he was representing the Scuderia, Mekies was highly critical of Red Bull’s cost-cap breach. That’s another area where he may feel Horner let standards slip.

The Frenchman will be reluctant to speak negatively about his predecessor in public. He knows that many within the team still hold Horner in extremely high regard after 20 richly successful years.

Indeed, the atmosphere on Mekies’ first day at Red Bull – a Silverstone filming day – was apparently ‘muted’. There was a feeling of ‘sadness’ rather than excitement, but that may change once some time has passed.