Max Verstappen has never been shy about telling the world which voices he trusts. Back in 2021, fresh off a first world title, he said the quiet bit out loud: if Gianpiero Lambiase stopped, he’d stop too.
Five years on, reality has arrived in the form of a calendar date.
Red Bull has confirmed that Lambiase will leave the team for McLaren in 2028, when his current contract expires. That puts a formal end point on one of the most productive driver–race engineer pairings of the modern era — and, inevitably, it’s kicked up a familiar cloud of speculation about whether Verstappen’s long-term future is tied to the man known throughout the paddock simply as “GP”.
Verstappen’s response has been characteristically blunt: no.
“GP and I, we have a very honest and open relationship. That was all good,” Verstappen said when asked about the decision. He added he’d already given Lambiase his blessing and insisted there were no hard feelings.
Red Bull, for its part, didn’t dress it up. A spokesperson confirmed the timeline: “Oracle Red Bull Racing confirms that GianPiero Lambiase will leave the team in 2028, when his current contract expires.”
The Verstappen–Lambiase story is woven into Red Bull’s recent history. They first worked together at the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix — the weekend Verstappen won on his debut for the senior team — and they’ve since stacked up 71 grand prix wins and four world titles, with Lambiase’s clipped, unflustered delivery as the soundtrack to Verstappen’s most decisive moments and most combustible ones.
That’s why this matters beyond the usual silly-season gossip. Race engineers aren’t interchangeable parts, not at this level and not with a driver built so heavily around trust, timing and clarity under pressure. The Verstappen–Lambiase dynamic has never been about being mates; it’s been about being functional. Direct. Sometimes barbed. Always honest. It’s the kind of relationship teams spend years trying to build — and spend even longer trying not to break.
So when Verstappen tells you he’s fine with it, it’s worth listening to what he’s actually saying rather than what people want it to mean.
“The offer that he got, I would be an idiot to try and keep him,” Verstappen said, reflecting on the decision. “It’s not only about me all the time. It is also about his career and moving forward, so for me, it was a no-brainer to be honest.”
That’s Verstappen in a nutshell: pragmatic when it counts, impatient when it doesn’t. He knows Lambiase has earned his leverage, and he knows that, however tight the partnership has been, careers move on. The driver’s job is to win races. The engineer’s job is to make sure the driver can. If an opportunity lands that changes a career trajectory, even Verstappen understands you don’t slam the door because of nostalgia.
What Verstappen won’t entertain is the assumption that Lambiase’s move creates a slipstream for him to follow.
“Has nothing to do with it,” he said when asked directly whether the switch to McLaren had any bearing on his own plans.
The timing, though, invites scrutiny. Lambiase’s departure is scheduled for 2028 — ahead of the final year of Verstappen’s current Red Bull contract — which means Red Bull’s most important relationship on the pitwall will be in transition precisely when the team most needs stability at the top. It also means Verstappen will spend the next couple of seasons with the knowledge that the voice he’s relied on since his first Red Bull win has an end date.
That’s not a crisis, but it is a pressure point.
Verstappen has also made no secret of his frustrations with “today’s Formula 1”, a theme that’s lingered around him long enough to keep retirement talk alive even when it sounds far-fetched. Against that backdrop, losing Lambiase gives people an easy narrative: Verstappen, disillusioned with the sport, now without his long-time engineer, might simply walk.
Yet Verstappen’s own comments cut through that romanticism. He’s already pivoting to the practicalities: if he keeps driving, he’ll work with someone else. Simple as that.
“Well, otherwise, I don’t get to drive,” he said, when reminded of his famous 2021 line. “I will have to work with someone else, but I think times change.”
Red Bull, too, is talking like a team that knows elite operations don’t freeze in place. Verstappen said the squad is “looking to the future”, adding: “You always, I think, want to innovate and improve, and that’s what we are doing right now.”
Read between those sentences and you get the real subtext. Red Bull has time — but not endless time — to shape a succession plan that Verstappen buys into. Not just a name on a pitwall, but a working relationship robust enough to survive a bad weekend, a strategic argument, a late safety car, a title-deciding restart. That’s what Lambiase has been: a stabiliser and, at times, the only person in Verstappen’s immediate orbit who can challenge him in the moment.
McLaren, meanwhile, will be delighted. An engineer with Lambiase’s experience, sharpened by championship pressure and years of operating inside a winning machine, is exactly the kind of recruitment that signals serious intent. But that’s for 2028.
For now, Verstappen is drawing a line under the idea that one man’s move dictates his own — while acknowledging, more candidly than he did in 2021, that even the strongest partnerships in Formula 1 are ultimately temporary.
