AlphaTauri has poached Ferrari sporting director Laurent Mekies to replace team principal Franz Tost at the end of the season.
Tost, the joint longest serving active team boss in Formula 1 along with Christian Horner, will stay on as a consultant in 2024.
Ferrari is yet to confirm Mekies’s departure, but the highly rated Frenchman is expected to remain in post for the rest of the season before moving to Faenza at a date yet to be set.
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Peter Bayer will also be appointed as team CEO later this year, having previously held roles at the FIA as secretary general for sport and F1 executive director.
The restructure is the first major F1 move of Oliver Mintzlaff since taking the reins of Red Bull’s motorsport portfolio following the death of company founder Dietrich Mateschitz last year.
The team said its leadership changes were “aimed at securing the long-term stability and ensuring continuity”, which would appear to put to bed rumours earlier in the year that Red Bull’s new management was considering selling the team.
“First of all, I would like to thank Dietrich Mateschitz, who gave me the incredible opportunity to be team principal of Scuderia Toro Rosso and Scuderia AlphaTauri for the past 18 years,” Tost said. “It has been a true privilege to lead the team for such a long period and a great pleasure to work with so many motivated and skilled people, who share my passion for Formula 1.
“With 67 years old it is time to hand over, and with Peter as new CEO and Laurent as team principal, we found two very professional people who will bring the team to the next level.”
The move is a homecoming of sorts for Mekies, who spent almost 12 years at Faenza in his early F1 career before joining the FIA in 2014 and then Ferrari in 2018.
“I am honoured to take on the role of team principal and to return to the team where I spent a large portion of my early career,” Mekies said. “Scuderia AlphaTauri has all of the ingredients necessary for greater success in the future, and in tandem with Peter I’m looking forward to making that happen.”
Bayer paid tribute to Tost’s efforts as head of the team that was set up to blood drivers in Formula 1 with the aim of turning them into race winners and champions for Red Bull Racing.
Champions Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen both got their starts in Faenza, as did race winners Daniel Ricciardo, Pierre Gasly and Carlos Sainz.
“I would also like to thank Franz for his dedication to Scuderia AlphaTauri and its predecessor, Scuderia Toro Rosso,” he said. “His commitment to developing young talent has resulted in a Formula 1 grid where 25 per cent of the drivers have benefited from his guidance.”
Mekies and Bayer are strong acquisitions for Italy’s other Formula 1 team at a time AlphaTauri is in need of reinvention after slipping down the order under the new regulations.
Both are experienced F1 operators with high-level FIA experience, and Mekies in particular brings fresh working knowledge of one of F1’s largest teams.
But Mekies’s extraction from Ferrari is just the latest sign of Maranello’s brain drain following the ousting of former team boss Mattia Binotto at the end of last season.
The Frenchman’s poaching follows McLaren pinching former Ferrari head of vehicle concept David Sanchez for the role of technical director for car concept from next year.
Ferrari stalwarts Jonathan Giacobazzi, who was involved at the executive level, and Gino Rosato, who was in the garage, have left the team since Binotto was pushed out.
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There are also rumours in the Italian media that chassis chief Enrico Cardile is weighing up his options, those whispers having also suggested that Mekies was on the way out.
Binotto was a popular team chief who had done much to end the atmosphere of fear that tends to grip Ferrari, the most pressured team in the sport owing to its status as the de facto Italian national team.
The team had made a strong start to life under new rules on his watch with a unique take on the regulations, but weaknesses in strategy and operations had executive-level management lose faith in his leadership before he had had a chance to strengthen the weak spots.
Former Sauber boss Frédéric Vasseur replaced him at the start of the year, and though he has shuffled the pit wall in response to last year’s failures, there have been suggestions that some of the changes were already lined up by Binotto before his dismissal.
Vasseur is a well-regarded paddock operator. The walking out of several high-profile members of staff isn’t seen as a criticism of his position but rather of the direction of the team’s administration.
It re-emphasises that one of Vasseur’s biggest tasks at the helm of the Scuderia is to shield it from the whims of the company’s executive to allow it to flourish.