McLaren F1 have been angered by Mekies’s move to Ferrari wherein he will be reporting to the technical director Mattia Binotto.
Mekies, who was FIA’s safety delegate and deputy race director for Formula 1 and F2 will be joining Ferrari 6 months after his departure from FIA, a move that violates the discussion and the ‘agreement’ that all teams had reached to in the strategy group meeting.
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When Marcin Budkowski, the former head of the FIA’s technical department left to join Renault last year, it was decided that if FIA or F1 employees decided to join an F1 team, they would have to ensure a minimum wait period of 12 months.
Boullier has expressed his absolute anger over this, saying that the involved stakeholders should have valued the agreed upon time period.
The McLaren director is furious with Ferrari for having gone against ‘gentleman’s agreement’ and it has been a while since someone talked about Ferrari without bringing in the ‘F1 walk out’ reference.
“We very unhappy with the FIA for losing yet another key employee to a racing team,” Eric Boullier said.
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“Especially after it was agreed by all teams at the last Strategy Group meeting that no key technical FIA employees would be employed by a race team within 12 months of leaving the FIA.
“Ferrari went against the gentleman’s agreement, and the FIA has not enforced it.” he added.
All teams were involved in deciding that minimum period and we’ll have to wait and see how the other teams react to Mekies’ move and especially how the agreed upon period hasn’t been followed.
