Red Bull Racing’s secret weapon? An engineer who treats workflows like lap times
There’s a moment backstage at Web Summit when a member of the production crew — easily twice the size of Laurent Mekies — wraps a beefy arm around the Oracle Red Bull Racing CEO’s shoulder and steers him toward the soundboard to retrieve his phone for a selfie. Most executives leading 2,000-person organizations would bristle at the informality, even from a superfan. Mekies instead smiles, his demeanor unchanged as he accommodates the starstruck crew member. It’s a small moment but perhaps a revealing one about Mekies who, just four months ago, became only the second person to lead Red Bull Racing in its 20-year history. “The first feeling is one of being privileged, being honored, to suddenly be part of such an incredible team,” Mekies later tells me onstage in…
