Verstappen backs Newey’s Aston Martin move — and shrugs off Lambiase chatter
Max Verstappen isn’t in the business of handing out compliments, but when Adrian Newey takes a new job title, even the reigning heavyweight tips his cap.
Speaking ahead of the penultimate round in Qatar, Verstappen welcomed Newey’s promotion to team principal at Aston Martin from 2026, calling it a logical step in a paddock that increasingly hands the top job to its sharpest engineers. More tellingly, he sounded genuinely pleased for the man who helped architect his four-title run from 2021 to 2024 at Red Bull.
“You see more technical people becoming team bosses,” Verstappen said, noting Aston Martin is “going the same way.” As for how much time Newey will actually spend on the car? Verstappen didn’t pretend to know — but he’s “sure he will do well.”
Newey, who arrived at Aston Martin in March after his trophy-stuffed Red Bull tenure, has insisted car development remains his priority despite the promotion. The restructure sees former team principal Andy Cowell move into a chief strategy officer role to spearhead the three-way alliance with Honda (Aston’s incoming power unit partner) and Aramco.
There’s another, more personal layer to this story. The paddock has been humming with talk that Verstappen’s long-time race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase could follow Newey to Silverstone in a senior leadership position. Lambiase started his F1 career with the team back in the Jordan/Force India days, engineering the likes of Vitantonio Liuzzi, Paul di Resta and Sergio Perez before joining Red Bull in 2015. He worked with Daniil Kvyat until a certain teenager won on debut in Barcelona 2016 — and the Verstappen–Lambiase partnership has been F1’s gold standard ever since.
If Lambiase did leave, Red Bull has a proven back-up in Simon Rennie, Daniel Ricciardo’s former race engineer who covered for Lambiase at the Austrian and Belgian Grands Prix last season from a factory-based role. But let’s be honest: splitting Verstappen and GP would be seismic. For now, Verstappen isn’t biting on hypotheticals and hasn’t suggested any grand plan beyond focusing on his own job.
Aston Martin’s recruitment drive under Newey has already been aggressive. Ex-Red Bull and Racing Bulls strategist Nick Roberts is in for 2026. Giles Wood, a former Red Bull simulations lead whom Newey publicly praised as the kind of expertise Aston needed, has returned to F1 with the team after a spell at Apple. Ferrari stalwart Marco Fainello has been added as a simulations consultant, and Enrico Cardile — formerly Ferrari’s technical director — joined the ranks this season. Layer that onto Honda power for the new regulations and you can see why the project is gathering gravitational pull.
Newey’s ascent also fits the sport’s broader trend of engineers at the helm: McLaren’s Andrea Stella, Williams’ James Vowles, Audi F1’s Jonathan Wheatley, and Laurent Mekies at Red Bull have all taken the big chair. The argument is simple — when regulations are tight and competitive windows tiny, decision-making rooted in engineering tends to travel faster.
What about Verstappen himself? He’s contracted to Red Bull through the end of 2028, and Aston Martin publicly swatted away talk of a $300 million bid earlier this year by reaffirming its commitment to Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, who are locked in for 2026 and beyond. That killed the story in the short term, but it won’t stop people connecting dots. Newey’s there. Honda’s there. The technical brain trust is thickening. It’s only natural to wonder.
Verstappen, for his part, kept it all business. He hasn’t discussed Newey’s new brief with him, didn’t have that option at Red Bull, and isn’t pretending to know Aston’s internal calculus. “Time will tell,” he said, before landing on the most Verstappen line of the weekend: happy for Adrian, and if Aston Martin benefits from his knowledge, so be it.
Translation: it’s a big move that could get even bigger in 2026. But until then, Verstappen’s not blinking. Red Bull still has a title to close out, and Max still has GP on the radio — for now.
