Laurent Mekies joined the Minardi team as an engineer in 2002. Now he’s back at the same outfit, now known as RB, via stints as the late Charlie Whiting’s deputy at the FIA and as sporting director of Ferrari. But this time he’s the boss…
WORDS OLEG KARPOV PICTURES
Given Franz Tost’s penchant for dry humour, you wouldn’t know how serious he was suggesting that his then-chief race engineer, Laurent Mekies, should leave – in order to return down the line armed with new knowledge and ideas.
And although Tost insists he was joking, Mekies – who had spent 12 years with the Faenza-based outfit from 2002 to 2014 – ended up doing as he was told.
“That’s how direct he could be!” Laurent laughs as GP Racing reminds him of the story Tost repeatedly told following the news that Mekies would replace him as team principal. “When at some stage, having spent a number of years together, we were looking for ways to move forward and take the next steps, that was his advice – which I obviously followed carefully!”
Mekies’ first race with the team – still Minardi back then – was in Australia in 2002, where Mark Webber finished fifth. Caught up in the excitement, Webber and team owner Paul Stoddart sneaked onto the podium to acknowledge the home crowd after the top three had departed, incurring a fine from the FIA. Mekies was Webber’s engine engineer. A graduate of Loughborough University, Mekies had started his F1 career at Arrows – as an employee of engine supplier Asiatech – just a year earlier. After moving to Faenza, he rose to the position of chief race engineer – that appointment coming shortly after Minardi was bought by Red Bull and renamed Scuderia Toro Rosso, with Tost taking the helm.
It was the Austrian, a devotee of discipline and order, who transformed (albeit not without the help of the energy drink company’s copious funding) the small Italian outfit from a perennial straggler into a competitive midfield force.
“Franz came with an incredible set of qualities,” says Laurent of his former boss, whose subordinates grew ever accustomed to him coming in to work earliest of all.
“He is like that. He really was the first to arrive at the factory – and that is just one of the incredible things that characterises his level of discipline. And he’s managed to turn the team into a very disciplined machine.
“You don’t realise it but, whether you like it or not, you become like him. Year after year you really become like him – with that
