Ferrari has appointed the FIA’s former safety director and deputy race director Laurent Mekies to its Formula 1 team. Mekies will report to Ferrari technical director Mattia Binotto when he joins the team on September 20. 

His role at the FIA was safety director in 2014 before he became deputy race director in 2016, reporting to Charlie Whiting. Mekies’ responsibilities covered safety and medical matters across FIA championships and R&D homologation. As a result of his appointment with Ferrari, he will no longer be involved with F1 and will step down as deputy F1 race director.

In the other direction, the FIA announced last week that former Ferrari chief designer Nikolas Tombazis, who also worked as an aerodynamicist and chief at McLaren from 2004-05, and an aerodynamicist at Benetton from 1992-95, would join as its new head of single-seater technical matters.

Renault controversially poached an FIA senior figure as former technical director Marcin Budkowski joined the team late last year. Budkowski had to take six months (double the minimum mandated three months) of gardening leave before joining Renault.