Red Bull insists it’s business as usual with Gianpiero Lambiase — at least for now — after confirming Max Verstappen’s long-time race engineer will remain in Milton Keynes to see out the final two years of his current contract, despite a deal already in place for him to join McLaren further down the line.
Speaking to Sky F1, new Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies framed Lambiase’s eventual switch as the sort of career move that doesn’t come around twice, but he was equally clear the team isn’t treating it like a man with one foot out the door.
“We have ‘GP’ with us for the next two years,” Mekies said. “We don’t feel as GP has left already, because we know he has a long-term agreement with us, and we have a few more wins and battles to win together.”
McLaren’s own announcement left the timeline deliberately elastic, stating Lambiase is expected to arrive “no later than 2028” as its chief racing officer. That wording inevitably invited paddock speculation: was this a short runway and an awkward transition, or a long glide path designed to keep everyone calm? Mekies has now nailed down Red Bull’s position — Lambiase is staying put until his deal is complete.
The dynamic matters because Lambiase isn’t just any senior hire; he’s been an anchor point in Red Bull’s most successful era. He joined the team in 2015 and has been Verstappen’s race engineer since that headline-winning debut together in Spain in 2016. Since 2025, he’s also carried the broader responsibility of head of racing — meaning his day job has already stretched beyond the radio exchanges fans can quote from memory.
Mekies, though, is leaning into the idea that Red Bull can turn a future departure into a managed evolution rather than a sudden hole in the wall.
“He has had an extraordinary opportunity. We respect the fact that this sort of opportunity comes once in a lifetime. He has decided to take it,” Mekies said. “It’s something we’ve been discussing with him for a very long time… When the time comes, we will make sure we turn that to an opportunity for people and for the skillset we want to have in.”
Pressed on whether Red Bull would keep him for the remainder of the deal, Mekies didn’t leave any wiggle room.
“GP is a fantastic professional, and we know he’s going to give the absolute best,” he said. “And of course, we are going to keep him.”
The other key piece of Mekies’ message was aimed at a predictable subplot: what this means for Verstappen, and whether it feeds into the low-level uncertainty that’s followed him through the early months of 2026.
Verstappen had been publicly critical of the 2026 rules package prior to tweaks made ahead of the Miami weekend, and any major change around his side of the garage was always likely to be interpreted through that lens — another potential irritant, another reason to wonder how locked-in he really is.
Red Bull’s counter is simple: Verstappen wasn’t blindsided, and the relationship remains tight enough that nothing of consequence happens without him understanding the context.
“We speak pretty much daily with Max,” Mekies said. “He was fully aware of the full extent of the discussions we were having with GP. A, because of his own relationship with GP, and B, because we are an open book.”
Mekies also painted a picture of a driver still embedded in the day-to-day grind, rather than someone drifting to the edge of the project.
“We often say Max is not outside of the project, judging the project. He’s inside with us pulling. He was here yesterday, he was here the day before, at the simulator,” he said. “On that front, he understands extremely well that we have done a long cycle together. We have a massive reservoir of talents in the team, and we have every chance to go to an even stronger level.”
If there’s an underlying edge to all this, it’s that Red Bull can’t really afford distraction at the moment. The 2026 season hasn’t begun with the sort of momentum Verstappen and the team have made a habit of. His sixth place in Melbourne stands as both his and Red Bull’s best result so far, an uncharacteristically modest benchmark heading into Miami.
That context is what makes Mekies’ attempt to project stability feel less like spin and more like necessity. Losing Lambiase immediately would have been a genuine tremor. Knowing he’s staying for two more years turns it into something else: a long, managed handover — and, for Red Bull, time to plan the next version of itself without asking Verstappen to do it on the fly.
For now, the message from the pit wall is clear: Lambiase is still on the timing stand, Verstappen is still in the loop, and Red Bull wants this season’s storyline to be about performance again — starting with a weekend in Miami they badly need to look like themselves.
