Nate SaundersApr 9, 2026, 12:34 PM ET
The departure of Max Verstappen's longtime race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase will add fuel to the inferno that is building over the four-time world champion's immediate F1 future.
On Thursday, it was confirmed that Lambiase -- better known as "GP" to fans familiar with F1 broadcasts, the voice on the other end of Verstappen's occasionally fraught radio messages -- will join McLaren as chief racing officer no later than 2028, with his Red Bull contract set to end at the conclusion of the previous season.
It was a bombshell bit of news and something which might have serious ramifications down the line.
The confirmation of Lambiase's move could not come at a more ill-timed moment in terms of Red Bull's hopes of convincing its superstar driver to keep racing beyond 2026. Verstappen made it clear after the Japanese Grand Prix that he is seriously contemplating walking away from F1 at the end of the year, something he had previously hinted at. The likelihood of the Dutchman not staying on in 2027 -- or, at the very least, racing somewhere other than Red Bull -- seems more tangible than ever now.
His primary motivation for doing that would appear to be his well-stated hatred of F1's new cars -- which feature hybrid engines with an unprecedented emphasis on battery harvesting and power deployment -- but the situation at the Red Bull team he's raced at since 2016 is not insignificant either.
It would be easy to say that Verstappen's desire to leave is just that he has found himself with an uncompetitive car this year. That is true about the team's current state of affairs, but perhaps oversimplifies what has happened at Red Bull Racing in conjunction with the beginning of an F1 era of cars which might go down as the most controversial and debated of all time. Lambiase's imminent departure follows a trend which has been developing behind the scenes for a little while.
Red Bull's title dynasty has collapsed
The all-conquering Red Bull team that Verstappen won four straight world titles with between 2021 and 2024 has crumbled in alarming time.
The headline item of that was the shock sacking of team boss Christian Horner last July, and it would be easy to fixate just on that one departure. But there have been plenty of others which have been significant.
Horner's departure came shortly after the exits of design legend Adrian Newey and longtime sporting director Jonathan Wheatley to Aston Martin and Audi, respectively. Former Red Bull designer Rob Marshall had already left for McLaren a few years earlier -- his cars won the constructors' championship in 2024 and 2025, the latter also coming with Lando Norris' drivers' title. In joining McLaren, Lambiase will reunite with Marshall and with former Red Bull head of strategy Will Courtenay, who started as McLaren's sporting director this year after a prolonged contractual dispute between the two teams.
And then let's not forget one of the most significant, from the Verstappen perspective -- Helmut Marko, Red Bull's racing adviser. Verstappen's ties with Marko were so strong that at the 2024 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Verstappen told the media he would not continue at Red Bull if the Austrian had been fired around that time. Marko left the team quietly at the end of last year.
Even more recently, and away from the public eye, there have been some key departures in terms of Verstappen's circle. The Dutchman's chief mechanic, Matt Caller, left for Audi over the winter, while long-serving and hugely respected front-end mechanic Ole Schack is set to leave as well.
Several other key members of his team, including engineers Michael Manning, David Mart and Tom Hart, are also set to leave -- sources told ESPN that replacing these roles has been an issue. Another departure which went under the radar was that of chief designer Craig Skinner, someone massively rated by Verstappen, which was announced this February. It can be easy to overlook people in teams who are not so prominently in the public eye, but all three of those men were seen as fundamentally important parts of the day-to-day workings of Red Bull's current F1 outfit.
This was not supposed to be how things went for Red Bull this year. Horner's sudden departure last year was seen by many internally and externally as a chance to end the toxic culture some felt existed under Red Bull's longtime team boss. It also represented a clear sign that the reins of the team had been taken over by the wider Red Bull company, based in Austria and fronted by executive Oliver Mintzlaff, who was a key figure in Horner's firing.
Horner's replacement, Laurent Mekies, oversaw Verstappen's dramatic title fightback last year, largely credited with a car upgrade at the Italian Grand Prix, which had been in the pipeline long before that change was made, but that competitive season has bled into a year which looks likely to be frustrating at best. Mintzlaff's bold gambit in removing Horner so decisively -- and, it must be said, without a well-thought-out succession plan -- appears to have been unsuccessful in stopping the rot at Red Bull. Outwardly, the former world champion outfit looks more like a sinking ship -- following confirmation of Lambiase's departure, Verstappen must feel more aware than ever before that he now remains one of the few to have donned a buoyancy jacket and headed for the nearest lifeboat.
The contrast between Red Bull and Lambiase's new team, McLaren, the reigning world champions, could not be more stark here either. On Thursday, hours after many media outlets, including ESPN, had reported Lambiase's move, McLaren and Red Bull put out statements confirming the news. McLaren took on an almost boastful tone, pointing to the trifecta it has nabbed from Red Bull's once-great team. McLaren's said: "The team's ability to attract and secure top talent, like Lambiase, and previously Rob Marshall and Will Courtenay, alongside the retention and promotion of highly-talented people already within the team, is a testament to the strategic vision and culture that are integrally embodied in the McLaren Mastercard F1 Team under the leadership of Zak Brown and Andrea Stella, who are also both on long-term contracts."
The final line was aimed at quietening rumors which also surfaced on Thursday that Stella might have signed a deal to join Ferrari, rumors that McLaren has strongly refuted. In luring Lambiase away, CEO Zak Brown and Stella appear to have put an ace up their sleeve in terms of driver market negotiations down the line. No-one in F1 is certain what Verstappen's next step will be, and whether any decision to not race in 2027 would be a sabbatical or something more long-term, but signing the Dutchman's most trusted confidant in the paddock suddenly makes McLaren a team we must consider as a contender for his services down the line should he recommit to a Formula 1 career beyond his time with Red Bull.
Lambiase's departure a big blow
It would be easy to simply dismiss Lambiase as being "just" Verstappen's race engineer -- a role he has held since Verstappen's victorious debut for the team at the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix. However, the reality is that he has been one of the most important parts of the team for a long while. Lambiase's influence behind the scenes is significant.
He was made head of race engineering in 2022 and then Head of Racing at Red Bull in 2024, roles he dovetailed with the role of race engineer for Verstappen. In hindsight, doubling up with his current job now seems like a major oversight by Red Bull -- sources have told ESPN the team seriously considered giving Verstappen a different race engineer in 2025 to alleviate some of the pressure on Lambiase, which both parties were open to as well. That change did not happen. It was a massive undertaking on top of Lambiase's other responsibilities within the race team.
You only need to listen to their radio interactions to understand the strength of Verstappen's relationship with Lambiase. It is frank and sometimes brutally honest, but has underpinned one of the most successful careers Formula 1 has ever seen. Through good times and bad during his Red Bull tenure, Lambiase has always been by Verstappen's side. As a result, their relationship is close -- Verstappen once told Dutch media he knew he could call Lambiase 24/7, about anything in the world, something that he said went both ways. The pair shared an emotional moment after Verstappen missed out on the 2025 championship by just two points. The fact that he is now leaving will only add to any feelings of doubt Verstappen has about the current direction Red Bull is moving in.
Lambiase's next move is also noteworthy. It is always telling when someone leaves one team for another in a sideways trajectory, and this appears to be what Lambiase has done by moving over to Brown's McLaren team. Sources told ESPN that Lambiase had been approached by Aston Martin at least once in the last 12 months over becoming team principal, but those approaches were rebuffed. Yet he has taken a role with McLaren, which is similar -- in terms of where his name will sit in an org chart relevant to the most senior figures in the team -- to his current position at Red Bull.
Multiple sources have told ESPN that the atmosphere within the current Red Bull team has been poor -- a feeling only exacerbated by the team's slow and frustrating start to the new F1 rules cycle. Seeing a senior team member -- and perhaps the closest ally of its superstar driver -- happy to walk sideways to another team will only underline the suggestions that something is fundamentally wrong at the heart of Red Bull's race operation.
No one knows for sure what Verstappen's next move will be, but after speaking to multiple sources around the F1 paddock on Thursday, the general feeling -- inside and outside of Red Bull -- was clear. Lambiase's move, even if it is a little way down the line, could be the final nail in the coffin in terms of Red Bull's chances of convincing Verstappen to ride out his current bad feeling about Formula 1 and keep racing beyond 2026.
He has months until he needs to make that decision -- he can trigger release clauses in August if he is not second or higher, but does not actually need to inform the team of his decision either way until October -- but after the latest developments, the writing already appears to be firmly on the wall.
