RB boss Laurent Mekies jokes he owes his Formula 1 career to 59 y/o one-time F1 winner

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Visa Cash App RB team principal Laurent Mekies has shared the story of how he got into Formula 1 and it involved one-time race winner Jean Alesi.

The newly renamed Italian team are under new direction in 2024 after Franz Tost stepped away from the outfit at the end of last year.

Speaking on the Beyond The Grid Podcast, Mekies talked about the chance job advert he responded to and how that relates to the 59-year-old former F1 driver.

Mekies shares how Alesi helped him reach Formula 1

There are high hopes for RB heading into the 2024 season after they tightened their ties with current champions Red Bull over the winter.

They also recruited heavily, bringing in the likes of Alan Permane, Tim Good and Guillaume Cattelani to help them improve on their 8^th-place finish last season.

Laurent Mekies is the key figure at RB now, taking over as team principal in the winter with Peter Bayer now above him as CEO.

Their displays in testing in Bahrain set tongues wagging, with Daniel Ricciardo even tipped for podiums after being the fastest driver in the final practice session.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go to plan in the race, with Yuki Tsunoda nearly crashing into his teammate on the cooldown lap.

Mekies is quickly learning about what he needs to deal with as a Formula 1 team principal, but couldn’t have imagined he would be in this position after entering the paddock thanks to a move Jean Alesi made more than 20 years ago.

The situation has reportedly been diffused but he’s likely to face many more situations like this over the course of the season.

Alesi played unlikely role in RB team principal’s career

Talking about how he got into F1, Mekies said: “I just sent my CV [to Peugeot F1] and see what happens, had an interview, had two interviews and I got the job.

“Two weeks after I was with Peugeot supplying the engines to Arrows at Silverstone testing and three weeks after we were in Melbourne, so it was like my life changing in four weeks.

“But the funny aspect of it is why Peugeot were looking for an engineer at that moment. That was because if you recall, in 2000 it was the Prost/Peugeot relationship and Jean Alesi was driving for them.

“And then Jean went to Sauber for the following year, Sauber had a Ferrari engine, so he took with him his personal engineer to Ferrari, actually the guy is still there.

“As a result, Peugeot was missing one guy, they put out this ad and I answered the ad and got the job!”

Host Tom Clarkson joked: “I think you owe your career to Jean Alesi!”

Mekies replied: “In some respects, in some respect I do! But he knows the story.”

While Mekies’s story about Alesi helping him get into Formula 1 sounds great, he may have got one of the key details wrong.

Alesi was still driving for Prost at the start of 2001 before moving to Jordan as he had driven for Sauber before his time with the French team.

Regardless, the engineering situation meant Peugeot needed someone new and Mekies’s career has gone from strength to strength since then.

That’s very different to Peugeot’s F1 involvement, which ended in 2000 with Mekies moving across to Asiatech the following year.