In the premiere episode of Securing the Win, 1Password’s docuseries with Oracle Red Bull Racing, viewers get an exclusive look inside the mindset of Laurent Mekies, the new CEO and Team Principal.
After leading the Racing Bulls in 2024 into the 2025 mid-season, Mekies steps into one of the most demanding roles in motorsport – leading a championship team where performance is measured in thousandths of a second. His mission: steward a championship legacy, navigate pressures to stay ahead, and balance the responsibilities of leading a team operating at the edge of human and technological performance.
And yet, for all the data and downforce analysis, Mekies insists success begins with people. “Formula 1® is a people business,” he says. “Everything you see around here – the infrastructure, the tools, the processes – they’re just a consequence of the quality of the people we have.”
Mekies’ is the story of trust at 300 km/h and learning to steer legacy, innovation, and human potential toward a single goal: securing the win. Watch Lauren Mekies in conversation with Calum Nicholas, former Senior Engine Technician turned brand ambassador and host of Securing the Win.
Calum spent nearly a decade working inside Oracle Red Bull Racing’s garage and pit crew, helping power the team through multiple championship seasons. Now, he brings fans behind the scenes to uncover the hidden stories within Formula 1® and take you inside one of the sport’s most secure organizations.
The human element of high performance
Formula 1® is defined by speed and precision, but for Laurent Mekies, the future of the championship-winning team comes down to one thing: people.
“Our number one asset is our people,” he explains. “If you factor in the size of staff the top teams have now, you quickly realize how the competitive edge is closely tied to how much each team member is performing in their job.”
For Mekies, leadership is about clarity in communication, support, and letting talent lead their respective fields. He says his people “ need to feel full support and have clear ownership over their areas of responsibility. If you do that, and combine it with the endless desire we all have to improve things, that’s how you tackle failure.”
That focus on people-first performance extends beyond the garage. At Oracle Red Bull Racing HQ in Milton Keynes, UK, all functional teams rely on 1Password to simplify how they access tools, share data, and keep every login secure, so the engineering and operations teams can focus on performance, not cybersecurity.
1Password is the Official Cybersecurity Partner of Oracle Red Bull Racing because we believe that these same principles drive performance everywhere. By removing friction and simplifying identity security for everyone, we safeguard people to move quickly and give them the tools to protect what matters most. Because in a world moving this fast, access is your green light, and when it’s trusted, it’s proof that security and speed can finally go hand-in-hand.
Engineering excellence
Formula 1® lives at the razor’s edge between human decision-making and technological precision, and Laurent Mekies, an engineer by training, thrives on it. He sees complexity as a proving ground for excellence. As the team has grown, it’s a reminder to Mekies that behind every race are hours of analysis and thousands of decisions, each measured, tested, and authenticated.
Mekies believes outstanding leadership can come from anywhere. “You find a bit of every background in the pit lane, it’s the most complex sport in the world,” he reflects. “What we all want is leadership, regardless of the style.”
Inside Oracle Red Bull Racing, that leadership translates into a culture of constant iteration. “Every part of this team is breathing for innovation, always looking for the next thing,” he says. “What we’re trying to do is balance that against potential lap time, that’s the equation.”
It’s a mindset familiar to any high-performance environment, from the track to the digital world. Both demand performers who move fast, systems that stay precise, operations that flow, and trust in those who hold the controls.
Innovation at the edge: turning pressure into opportunity
For Formula 1® drivers, 0.2 seconds is all it takes to make a decision that could win or lose a race. That kind of precision demands striving beyond limitations, taking risks, chasing progress, and accepting that failure is part of the process.
“If you want to be competitive, you have to be on the edge. And if you’re on the edge, you’re going to be hurt at some stage,” Mekies says. “When something fails, we know it’s part of the game. You don’t see finger-pointing. Everyone knows we’re on the edge to extract as much performance as possible.”
For Mekies, resilience is about learning from setbacks faster than before. “As a human being and as a group, you learn a lot more in the difficult moments than you do in the good ones,” he reflects. “Behind every win, there are many difficult days.”
Ultimately, innovation is about trusting people to move quickly, make decisions, and bring their best selves to the work. That’s what drives a Formula 1® team and every person or team navigating new technology, distributed work, and the rise of AI-driven solutions.
Today, every company is a technology company, and every employee is a decision-maker in their digital ecosystem. The same drive for speed that powers innovation in Formula 1® is reshaping how work gets done. People adopt the tools that help them move faster, often beyond the boundaries of traditional IT perimeters.
In this race, security must be about more than rigid control. It has to enable productivity, continuously adapting without slowing people down. That’s the new productivity paradigm 1Password is helping shape: security that moves as fast as the people and businesses it protects.
When you safeguard people with the right access, govern intelligently, and verify continuously, you close the Access-Trust Gap and give the green light to innovation.
Under the hood: the invisible power behind the performance
For every podium celebration, there are thousands of invisible contributions. From aerodynamicists and data engineers to the IT specialists ensuring systems stay secure, every role matters, each contributing to the collective effort of shaving milliseconds off the margin for error.
“Security is like Formula 1®,” Mekies says. “You need the people talent, and when everything works well, it gives you the performance you don’t see every day but allows all of us to focus on what we need to do.”
That’s where 1Password comes in, the invisible layer of trust that helps keep Red Bull Racing’s operation running at full speed.
Mekies says. “<1Password> is the invisible help that you need in the business. It’s very easy to get our talent to waste time and energy on tasks they shouldn’t worry about. We’re in a business where security and IP are paramount – and that layer of protection gives us lap time. It’s as simple as that.”
In Formula 1®, that translates to performance on the track. In the digital world, it translates to peace of mind and the assurance that your people, devices, and secrets are secure.
This sentiment applies to IT and security teams everywhere, whose work often goes unseen but powers every moment of progress.
Because the best security doesn’t get noticed, it gets results.
Portrait of a leader: calm in the chaos
Mekies and the Oracle Red Bull Racing team embrace discomfort in a sport defined by pressure.
“It’s part of the sport to enjoy your own calmness in the middle of that overwhelming environment,” he says. “We adapt and evolve to where we need that environment to perform our best. We want that intensity. We need that intensity.”
That calm is orchestration in motion. Like a CISO managing the complex demands of enterprise security, Mekies must coordinate hundreds of moving parts in real time, engineering, data, performance, and people, without losing clarity or control. His leadership isn’t about command; it’s about rhythm.
In the pit, that composure sharpens the team’s competitiveness. In business, it’s what enables organizations to stay secure, agile, and focused amid constant change. Just as Formula 1® teams find rhythm in chaos, the best leaders model calmness amid complexity, meet pressure with precision, and turn precision into performance.
The race to 2026
If the present demands focus, the future demands ambition. And for Oracle Red Bull Racing, the next great leap is 2026, when the team, in partnership with Ford, will launch the most technically advanced and cleanest engines ever seen in motorsport.
It’s a moment that perfectly captures the Red Bull spirit: boldness, freedom, and constant reinvention. That same spirit defines the partnership between Oracle Red Bull Racing and 1Password, a shared belief that progress happens when people are trusted to innovate, adapt, and move fast together.
“This team is living for one thing,” Mekies says. “To win. And we want to do that with our uniqueness, with the Red Bull spirit.”
For Mekies and the Oracle Red Bull Racing team, the road to 2026 is already underway.
Securing the win
As the conversation closes, one idea echoes above all others: performance begins and ends with trust. Trust in your people, your systems, and your partners.
“Everybody in the team has a small part in that thousandth of a second,” Mekies says. “Everyone, our partners, everyone on the team can bring an extra bit of performance to the business. And when we all go to work in the morning with that desire, that’s how it adds up.”
From secure sign-ins to powerful SaaS management, these quiet improvements echo the culture Mekies champions, everyone contributing to the thousandth of a second. When access is trusted and effortless, every person on the team moves faster.
That’s the essence of Securing the Win: revealing what it takes to perform at the highest level, on the track, in business, and beyond.
Stay tuned for episode 2 with Oracle Red Bull Racing Chief Security Officer Mark Hazelton, which will be available on YouTube on October 29.
Chris Fowler
Sr. Content Marketing Manager
