…THAT LAY IN THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT.

Red Bull Racing Team Principal, Laurent Mekies. (Image credit: Motorsport Photography F1 via Shutterstock)

This is the team principal, that runs the team, that has the driver, that drove the car, that was built by the man, that worked at the factory, that lay in the house that Horner built.

It reads better as the original nursery rhyme, the one about the dog that chased the cat that killed the rat that ate the mouse, but the question underneath it is a fair one. How much more time does Laurent Mekies need?

This isn't a hit piece. Mekies inherited an operation that had just spent over a decade at the top and was clearly struggling. He was promoted to team principal in July 2025 and has spent his first year in the job navigating a genuine rebuilding phase. That is not a small task to manage, and more than a year in, Red Bull is still searching for the on-track form that used to be its baseline.

One of Mekies' bigger achievements, and it shouldn't be understated, is convincing Max Verstappen to stay. Verstappen has now extended his contract with Red Bull through to 2030, after seriously weighing up whether to leave the team, or the sport, altogether. That decision came despite Red Bull's car struggling to match the pace of a dominant Mercedes this year, and it puts to rest any speculation Verstappen might walk at the end of his previous deal. Mekies has called it the standout achievement of his tenure so far, and it's hard to disagree. There's a quieter second win too: in Isack Hadjar, Red Bull now has a second driver who, across the season, has looked more assured in that seat than his predecessor Yuki Tsunoda ever did.

But nothing about how the Verstappen renewal has been reported tells us what the exit terms look like buried inside that new contract, and none of it fixes the car. Believing Mekies is capable of eventually steering this team back to the front is not the same as believing it will be quick, or easy. The house that Horner built took over a decade to construct, however sour the ending was for him and everyone else involved. Whatever Mekies is building next is going to take time too, whether the timeline he's been given allows for it or not. The truth about the circumstances surrounding Horner's sacking still sits in shallow, muddy water, which raises its own question: just how deeply damaged did the powers that be believe Horner's Red Bull had become?

Perhaps, then, this is the team principal, that runs the team, that has the driver, that drives the car, that is being built by the man that is saving the factory, that lay in the house that Horner broke.