Guenther Steiner isn’t buying the idea that Gianpiero Lambiase walking away from Red Bull is some kind of unprecedented alarm bell. In his view, it’s the most predictable thing in Formula 1: a successful organisation sheds people once the edge dulls, because that’s when rivals pounce — and when the people inside the machine start asking themselves what else is out there.
McLaren confirmed last week it has secured the services of Max Verstappen’s long-time race engineer, with Lambiase due to arrive in Woking no later than 2028. It’s a headline move not just because of Lambiase’s profile on the radio and the trophies that partnership helped deliver, but because it lands amid a broader unpicking of the Red Bull set-up that dominated the previous era.
Red Bull, after all, has already seen Rob Marshall, Will Courtenay, Adrian Newey and Jonathan Wheatley depart. Long-serving team principal Christian Horner was also moved on, before Helmut Marko left in the off-season. Even by modern F1 standards — where “key figure exits” have become almost routine — that’s a serious amount of institutional memory walking out of the building.
Steiner’s reading is blunt: teams become victims of their own excellence.
“You will see in Formula One, everything is cyclical,” Steiner said on the *Drive to Wynn* podcast. “Everything goes around.
“Red Bull was so good for so long time, and some people want something new, and some people see their value is highest now.”
That last line is the part paddock people tend to say quietly. If you’re a senior operator inside a winning team, the market value of your CV is never higher than it is before the results slide, before the internal politics bite, and before your role gets reshuffled in the inevitable “reset”. When the offers arrive, you don’t always get the luxury of waiting for the perfect timing — but you do get a window where the phone calls are more urgent and the money is more serious.
And Steiner doesn’t portray Red Bull as a basket case, either. He points out they’re still in the fight — just not the fight they were used to.
“Red Bull… they are still good,” he said. “They are still third or fourth… strongest team there. So it’s not bad, but they are not winning everything anymore.
“And obviously the value of these people is there when they are winning or when they are doing good. If these guys are not leaving now, maybe they have to wait until it comes back to Red Bull, that they win again.”
That’s the harsh logic of F1’s talent market. The moment a team stops being the place where careers are made, it becomes the place where careers are leveraged — and once one high-profile figure breaks cover, others start to believe it’s possible. It isn’t always coordinated, but it can look that way from the outside as departures stack up.
PlanetF1.com understands Aston Martin made a play for Lambiase before McLaren got there first, which underlines the point: this wasn’t a sentimental change, it was a competitive one. Everyone knows what Lambiase represents. He’s not just a familiar voice; he’s a high-trust operator who’s spent years at the sharp end of pressure, decision-making and the very specific rhythms that come with being attached to a top driver.
Which is why, inevitably, the Verstappen angle is the one that refuses to go away. When a driver loses a key ally — particularly one embedded in the weekly work, not just the big-picture management — it’s fair to ask what that does to their sense of stability. Steiner expects there was a straightforward conversation, and he notes that both Verstappen and his father, Jos, have effectively indicated as much.
“I wouldn’t say blessing,” Steiner said. “But I think Max is grown up enough that if GP explains to him that he has got a good opportunity which he needs to take, I think Max is fair enough to say, ‘hey buddy, you helped me a lot in my career, now you have to look after yours’.
“I’m not saying that Max was happy that he’s leaving… but again, Max is now grown up enough to say, ‘I don’t want to hinder you… do what you need to do for you’.”
There’s also an unusually pragmatic point buried in Steiner’s take: drivers can step away whenever they like. Engineers can’t. They have to build their next chapter while they’re still in demand, because the sport doesn’t wait.
Red Bull’s task now is less about finding a like-for-like replacement for one person — that’s rarely how it works — and more about rebuilding the connective tissue that makes a top team feel inevitable on a Sunday. Those departures have come alongside broader changes around the company, and Steiner frames it as a mix of performance swing and leadership churn that’s been brewing for a while rather than a sudden collapse.
He believes the responsibility for the next phase sits with Laurent Mekies, who took over as team principal after last year’s British Grand Prix. Steiner is complimentary about Mekies, but he’s also realistic about timelines — a word F1 loves to ignore until it has no choice.
“He will need some time to fix it again,” Steiner said. “He cannot fix it in six months… he’s not magician.
“If they give Laurent enough time, he will fix it, bring in his own people, try to find again young talent… But it will take some time. They cannot expect that they will be back as the dominating team in the next year or two.”
That’s the real significance of Lambiase’s move: not that Red Bull suddenly forgets how to race, but that the sport’s gravitational pull has shifted. McLaren doesn’t just gain a proven pair of hands; it sends a message that Red Bull’s inner circle is no longer out of reach.
And in F1, once that perception changes, the rest can follow faster than anyone inside the factory would like to admit.
