Jos Verstappen has never been one to leave much to the imagination, and he’s offered the bluntest explanation yet for why Gianpiero Lambiase is walking away from Red Bull to join McLaren: the money.
“Because they’re offering him a lot of money,” Verstappen Sr wrote on social media, responding to a suggestion that McLaren boss Andrea Stella “knows exactly why” he’s landed Max Verstappen’s long-time engineer.
It’s a line that will land with a thud in Milton Keynes — not because F1 is shocked that a top operator is being paid accordingly, but because Red Bull has built much of its modern dominance on continuity and culture. Lambiase wasn’t just another name on the pit wall; he was a constant in Verstappen’s cockpit world, the voice that helped shape how Red Bull operated under pressure and how Verstappen processed it.
McLaren announced earlier this month that it has secured Lambiase for a senior role, with the 45-year-old set to arrive “no later” than 2028 when his current Red Bull deal expires. The job title is chief racing officer, reporting directly to Stella, and it’s hard to dress that up as anything other than McLaren buying itself leadership bandwidth at the sharp end of the sport.
That’s the point here: this isn’t a neat little personnel switch dressed up as a career progression. It’s a strategic raid.
Stella has already framed it that way, calling the appointment “the classic icing on a cake that already has the right ingredients” and presenting it as proof of just how “attractive” McLaren has become. He pointed to the team’s title success over the last two years as a key part of that pull — the kind of momentum that changes the way people inside the paddock talk about you, and more importantly, the kind that makes ambitious staff believe their best days could be ahead, not behind.
Verstappen Sr’s money line adds another layer, though. It doesn’t contradict the competitive argument; it completes it. The most serious teams don’t just sell a vision — they pay for it. And if McLaren is now in the business of outbidding rivals for elite personnel while also offering a credible path to winning, that’s a very different McLaren to the one the paddock was politely applauding for “progress” a few seasons ago.
Max Verstappen, for his part, hasn’t exactly mounted a campaign to keep Lambiase. If anything, his comments have sounded like a man who recognises the game and accepts the logic. Speaking at a Viaplay event last week, Verstappen said Lambiase had brought him the details of McLaren’s proposal and effectively sought his blessing before committing.
“I said: ‘You’d be daft not to take it,’” Verstappen explained. “We’ve already achieved everything together and then he gets such a fantastic offer, especially with his family in mind and the security it would bring him.”
There’s something revealing in that phrasing — not about Verstappen’s sentimentality, but about the sheer completeness of what he and Lambiase have done at Red Bull. When a driver can describe a relationship like that as “we’ve already achieved everything,” it underlines how hard it will be for Red Bull to replace the *exact* dynamic they had, even if the team can absolutely hire top engineers and keep winning races.
And while Red Bull will publicly insist this isn’t a Verstappen story, it inevitably brushes up against one. When a key pillar of a driver’s environment commits to a rival — even on a delayed timeline — the paddock starts asking questions it can’t un-ask. Not because Verstappen is suddenly packing boxes, but because it’s another data point in how power and stability are shifting across the grid.
McLaren’s pitch also appears to have had more than one hook. PlanetF1.com understands Lambiase could be positioned to eventually succeed Stella whenever the team principal seat becomes available, with sources indicating that scenario may have been part of the wider sell. It’s the kind of long-game promise that matters to senior figures: not just joining a project, but shaping it, owning it, and being empowered by it.
Stella, meanwhile, has been quick to knock down any suggestion that Lambiase is arriving as an heir apparent in the short term, laughing off speculation that he himself is bound for a return to Ferrari. He said the idea he’d reached a pre-contract agreement there “made me smile.”
The background to that chatter is obvious enough. Stella has history at Ferrari — he worked there from 2000 to 2014, collecting championships with Michael Schumacher and Kimi Raikkonen, later serving as Fernando Alonso’s race engineer before following Alonso to McLaren in 2015. Those resumes never stop generating gossip. But McLaren’s move for Lambiase looks less like an exit plan and more like an organisation leaning into its current strength: building depth, locking in leadership, and making sure rivals feel it every time they scan the personnel market.
Red Bull, of course, has time. Lambiase isn’t walking out tomorrow, and contracts matter. But the message has already been delivered, loudly: McLaren believes it can take people from the most successful structures in the sport and give them a better deal — financially and professionally.
And if Verstappen Sr is right that the money is eye-watering, it’s also a reminder that the grid’s new battles aren’t only fought on Sundays. They’re fought in boardrooms, in the margins of contracts, and in the quiet confidence of teams that think they’re on the rise.
McLaren is acting like one of them.
