Gianpiero Lambiase, Max Verstappen’s long‑time race engineer and one of the most influential figures inside Red Bull Racing, will leave the team at the end of the 2027 season, with a move to McLaren scheduled for 2028.
The Milton Keynes outfit confirmed the news in a brief statement, noting both his importance and the shared commitment to finish their partnership strongly: “GP is a valued member of the Team, which he joined in 2015.
“Until his planned departure, he continues in his roles as Head of Racing and as Race Engineer to Max Verstappen. The Team and he are fully committed to add more success to our strong track record together.”
Lambiase’s career
Lambiase’s departure marks the end of one of the defining engineer–driver partnerships of the modern era. Born in Bedford in 1980 to Italian parents, he entered Formula One in 2005 with Jordan and remained through the team’s transitions into Midland, Spyker, and Force India.
His early career included performance‑engineering Giancarlo Fisichella to Force India’s first pole position and podium at the 2009 Belgian Grand Prix, followed by race‑engineering roles for Vitantonio Liuzzi, Paul di Resta, and Sergio Pérez. Across those years he built a reputation for calm authority, technical precision, and an ability to extract performance from a wide range of drivers.
Red Bull recruited him in 2015 as Daniil Kvyat’s race engineer, but his defining chapter began in 2016 when Max Verstappen was promoted to the senior team. The Verstappen–Lambiase dynamic quickly became one of the most recognisable in Formula One: terse, brutally honest, often dryly humorous, and always rooted in mutual trust.
Verstappen has repeatedly credited Lambiase for grounding him emotionally and technically, describing him as the one person who can challenge him without hesitation. Their radio exchanges became part of Red Bull’s competitive identity, and their collaboration underpinned Verstappen’s run of world championships.
As Red Bull’s dominance grew, so did Lambiase’s responsibilities. In 2022 he succeeded Guillaume Rocquelin as Head of Race Engineering, and in 2025 he was promoted again to Head of Racing following Jonathan Wheatley’s departure to Sauber/Audi.
The restructuring placed Lambiase as the third‑ranking figure in Red Bull’s technical and sporting hierarchy, reporting directly to Technical Director Pierre Waché and Team Principal Laurent Mekies, while overseeing race operations, heritage activities, car‑build coordination, and regulatory compliance.
Even with these expanded duties, he continued to serve as Verstappen’s race engineer, a dual role that reflected both his technical breadth and the team’s reliance on his leadership.
In 2025 he missed two race weekends — Austria and Belgium — due to personal reasons, with Simon Rennie stepping in as Verstappen’s race engineer and temporarily assuming his Head of Racing responsibilities. The absences were notable precisely because they were unprecedented; until then, Lambiase had never missed a race with Verstappen.
What does the future hold for Lambiase?
His planned move to McLaren in 2028 as Head of Race Engineering fits the Woking team’s broader strategy of strengthening its technical structure by recruiting senior Red Bull personnel, following earlier acquisitions such as Rob Marshall.
For Red Bull, the long lead time before his departure allows for a managed transition, but the loss is undeniably significant. Lambiase has been central not only to Verstappen’s success but also to the operational culture that defined Red Bull’s dominance in the mid‑2020s.
The implications extend beyond engineering. Verstappen has previously hinted that his own long‑term future is closely tied to Lambiase’s presence, once remarking that he “only works with GP.” With two more seasons together before the partnership ends, Red Bull faces both the challenge of succession planning and the broader question of how this departure may influence Verstappen’s trajectory.
