Surprisingly to many people inside the paddock, McLaren has confirmed the hiring of Gianpiero Lambiase, long-time race engineer of Max Verstappen. The announcement was made last week, with the expectation that he will join Zak Brown’s team in 2028, when his contract with Red Bull ends.
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Lambiase is another big name to leave Red Bull in recent years and the third to move to McLaren, after Rob Marshall and former strategy chief Will Courtenay. Additionally, Red Bull has undergone significant changes with the departure of technical chief Adrian Newey and sporting director Jonathan Wheatley. Former team principal Christian Horner was dismissed in July last year, and Helmut Marko left the advisory role at the end of the 2025 season.
These departures have raised doubts about Max Verstappen’s future and a possible cultural change within the team. On the Sky Sports F1 Show podcast, commentator Karun Chandhok said: “Whatever the reason for this brain drain, an absolute cultural change has happened throughout the organization with all the names that have left.”
He also stated: “There is a big job for Laurent Mekies and Red Bull’s management in Austria to figure out how to stop this and how to become attractive.”
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For David Croft, Red Bull needs to react to the moment. He defended the need for a “big signing” and said: “It’s not that people are abandoning a sinking ship, but they think their career success might be elsewhere outside Milton Keynes.”
Croft added that the team is going through a transition phase: “Red Bull has not always been the most successful team on the grid. It has ups and downs. And right now, they are heading into a low phase and need to recruit.”
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