Laurent Mekies has claimed that Christian Horner was the first one to text him and call him after he came to know that he was succeeding him at Red Bull. In a surprising move, where Christian Horner was sacked by the Austrian brand without any official reason till date.
It is a huge turning point for Mekies, who worked with Ferrari as a sporting director. He has to fill big shoes at Red Bull. Christian Horner played a huge role in building up the Red Bull team and led the squad to 14 titles in 20 years.
In the last one and a half years, there has been a significant drop in Red Bull's performance. With the F1 2025 title out of sight for Max Verstappen, the team called for new direction and dropped Christian Horner.
With Laurent Mekies being Horner's successor, and taking over the team just a few weeks ago. In a conversation with Sky Sports, Mekies revealed that Christian Horner was gracious right from the start, as he was the first one to wish him luck and has been texting him during the race weekends as well.
"He has been nothing else but supportive, even in the extremely difficult context for him. He was the first one to text, the first one to call [after the news]. Even this morning we messaged each other again. Is there any way, someone can do the same with Christian? No, or at least, certainly not me. But we will rely on the incredible strengths that there is in this team," said Laurent Mekies.
Change in Red Bull's approach
Martin Brundle believes that Red Bull's DNA is going to change as the squad is going to shift from being a team under Christian Horner that was very active politically to more of a laid-back approach. Horner was always a fierce competitor, and Mekies is a bit different.
"Laurent is a smart guy, diligent, hardworking - he'll play a completely different role to what Christian did. I can't imagine him doing the politics. If you think back to the some of the pit wall, shouting at the race director when they were able to do that, really fighting those political corners - that's not going to happen anymore. It's a different deal now."
Laurent Mekies has a tough task in front of him with where Red Bull is in the pecking order. It would be interesting to see what kind of performance he can pull with the team in the next 12 months.