Big F1 Engineer Exit
Gianpiero 'GP' Lambiase, Max Verstappen’s long‑time race engineer, is leaving Red Bull to join McLaren — a move media outlets say could be a major hint about Verstappen’s longer‑term plans. (gpfans.com) (gpfans.com). At the same time, Verstappen and Carlos Sainz have been vocal in criticizing this season’s new technical regulations, and F1 has already opened talks on small rule tweaks with a meeting set for April 20. (skysports.com) (espn.com).
A Formula One race engineer is the voice in a driver’s ear on every lap, and Max Verstappen has heard Gianpiero Lambiase on that radio since his first Red Bull race in Spain in May 2016. Red Bull and McLaren both confirmed on April 9 that Lambiase will leave Red Bull when his contract ends and take McLaren’s new chief racing officer job no later than 2028. (apnews.com) (espn.com) Lambiase is not a background figure. He has been Verstappen’s race engineer through four straight Formula One drivers’ titles from 2021 through 2024, and Red Bull promoted him to head of racing in 2024 on top of his pit wall role. (gpfans.com) (sports.yahoo.com) McLaren is not hiring him to wear a headset for one car. The team said he will become chief racing officer, report to team principal Andrea Stella, and arrive at the start of 2028 or earlier if Red Bull releases him before then. (sports.yahoo.com) (grandprix.com) That timing is why the move instantly turned into a Verstappen story. Verstappen’s closest trackside ally is leaving, and the switch lands after a two-year run of senior Red Bull departures that reports have linked to exits by Adrian Newey, Jonathan Wheatley, Helmut Marko, and Christian Horner. (gpfans.com) (espn.com) The extra wrinkle is that Verstappen has also been openly unhappy with this year’s new car rules. Formula One changed both the chassis rules and the engine rules for 2026, with a much bigger share of lap time now coming from electrical energy instead of only the gasoline engine. (espn.com) (planetf1.com) Drivers have complained that the new package can force them to manage battery energy too aggressively, especially in qualifying and at tracks with long full-throttle sections. Sky Sports reported on April 10 that the International Automobile Federation, the sport’s governing body, has already agreed to look at tweaks to energy-management rules after a technical meeting on April 9. (skysports.com) (the-race.com) Carlos Sainz has been one of the loudest voices pushing for flexibility, and Verstappen said in March that Formula One was already “a bit late” to be changing the concept after so much development work had been done. Those comments matter because a driver deciding whether to stay, switch teams, or step away is judging both the car in his garage and the direction of the sport around him. (sports.yahoo.com) (espn.com) The governing body has not promised a rewrite. It said after Thursday’s meeting that teams and power-unit makers were committed to “tweaks” to some aspects of the regulations, with two more April meetings planned before the Miami Grand Prix. (skysports.com) (gpfans.com) So the picture is not that Verstappen is suddenly packing his bags for McLaren tomorrow. The concrete facts are narrower and still big enough on their own: his race engineer and head of racing is leaving, McLaren has taken one of Red Bull’s most trusted voices, and Formula One is already discussing fixes to the rules Verstappen has criticized in the first months of 2026. (apnews.com) (skysports.com)
