With Gianpiero Lambiase leaving Red Bull for McLaren, and Zak Brown recently commenting on Red Bull’s stake in two F1 teams, it was a bit of a surprise to see him having a coffee, or rather a Red Bull, with Laurent Mekies at the Miami GP.
Mekies feels Red Bull already has the best talents
However, Mekies didn’t want to hype-up the story, insisting that discussions happen often between team bosses, and this one happened to be at the Red Bull motorhome.
“So, at first we talk very often with Zak and with my other colleagues,” Mekies explained in a print media session after the race in Miami. “So it’s not related to [one] thing or another, but certainly none of us wanted to go into a ping-pong about it and we had a good chat about it like we always do and we move on.”
Brown successfully poaching Lambiase to McLaren is yet another piece of the almighty Red Bull imperium crumbling down. Mekies feels that this necessitates the focus to create a company culture that attracts and keeps the best personnel.
“In terms of replacing GP, we have a couple of years to think about it, but joke aside, look, we are quite proud.
“As I said many times, we don’t want to be defensive about the fact that we lost some talent, it’s a fact, and it’s been there for 3 or 4 years and, as a result of that, it’s the highest priority in the team to make sure that we create the environment in order to retain, develop and attract the best talent in the meantime.
“We feel we have the best talent already, departments by departments, and that starts with Ben [Hodgkinson] on the power unit side for his team and with Pierre [Waché] on the chassis side and his team. So, under them we feel we have the best talent, departments by departments.”
Internal Red Bull promotion prime focus for Mekies
When it comes to attracting new talent, Mekies prefers to promote from within, rather than luring people away.
“When we can, we will always try to see how we can promote internally,” he admits. “We have created a number of talents over the last few years and we are proud of that, we want to continue.
“If and when we need to go and get a specific set of skills or experience from some of our dear competitors around the pitlane, we will do it. As we have done, you have seen last couple of weeks ago, we had a very good mix in our new structure, a very good mix of internal promotion with Ben Waterhouse having now an extended parameters and with Andrea Landi joining soon from Ferrari and Racing Bulls.
“That’s how we look at things, we go and give the best chance to our talents and if we need to go elsewhere to inject, we will do it happily.”
