Laurent Mekies was born in Tours, France on 28 April 1977. As a car-mad son of a car-mad father, a motorsport career was perhaps inevitable, even if the head of his engineering college warned all its students that motor racing was not a sensible career choice! But, from an early age, Laurent was determined, especially after his father took him to watch the 1988 French Grand Prix at Le Castellet.

Laurent graduated in mechanical engineering from the highly regarded ESTACA School in Paris, spending his final year at Loughborough University in the UK, well known as a “finishing school” for Formula 1 engineers. A trackside internship in 2000 with the all-conquering Signature team in French Formula 3 led to a position as an engine engineer with Asiatech, the company that supplied the Arrows team with its engines, which is how Laurent came to get his first taste of F1 in 2001.

A year later, he joined Minardi as a race engineer and stayed in Faenza for the following 12 years. When the team became Scuderia Toro Rosso in 2006, he was appointed Chief Engineer, responsible for all trackside operations, from the construction of the car at the factory to the race team at the track. Later he became Head of Vehicle Performance, managing six departments working on core car performance.

Laurent left Toro Rosso to join the FIA in 2014 as Safety Director, in charge of all Safety and Medical matters for the Federation across all its Championships, as well as R&D and homologation activities for both track and road. At the start of 2017 he was appointed F1 Deputy Race Director in addition to his existing duties, working alongside Charlie Whiting. He was also in charge of all sporting matters across the FIA single-seater categories.

Laurent joined Scuderia Ferrari in September 2018 as Sporting Director. In 2019, in addition to his existing responsibilities, he took on the role of Head of Track & Performance Area, while in 2021 he was promoted to the role of Racing Director. He bid farewell to the Prancing Horse in the summer of 2023 and, after the inevitable spot of “gardening leave,” he now returns to Faenza as our new Team Principal. When it comes to the box marked “hobbies” on his cv, Mekies points out that there are 24 races on the F1 calendar and he has three young sons!