Gianpiero Lambiase didn’t just become a familiar voice in Max Verstappen’s ear – he became part of the furniture at Red Bull, a constant through championships, regulation shifts, and the sort of high-pressure Sundays that tend to split engineer-driver pairings in half. That’s why the news of his impending move to McLaren, no later than 2028, lands with a thud in Milton Keynes.
McLaren have lined him up as Chief Racing Officer, working under team principal Andrea Stella. On paper it’s a senior operational role; in reality it’s a statement. Lambiase carries not only technical and procedural knowledge from a title-winning environment, but the kind of authority built through years of being the calmest person on the radio when everything’s on fire.
For Red Bull, though, this isn’t an isolated exit. It’s another notch in what’s starting to look less like normal paddock churn and more like a leak that won’t stop. The team has already watched a run of heavyweight names depart in recent seasons – Rob Marshall, Will Courtenay, Adrian Newey and Jonathan Wheatley among them – and it also said goodbye to long-serving team principal Christian Horner last year, with Helmut Marko leaving during the off-season. Laurent Mekies, now charged with steadying the ship, is doing so amid a very public recalibration of Red Bull’s identity.
Karun Chandhok put it bluntly: Red Bull can’t assume that performance alone will keep people in their seats.
Speaking on Sky’s *The F1 Show* podcast, Chandhok pointed out that Red Bull’s on-track form last year hardly suggested a team in crisis. They won six of the final nine Grands Prix and, in his view, ended the season with a car that was at least as quick as anything else on certain weekends.
Yet people are still leaving.
“That brain drain has gone on and there’s a cultural shift that has happened throughout the organisation,” Chandhok said, framing it as a problem that sits above lap time and below the surface: what it feels like to work there, day to day, and whether the organisation is still a place ambitious staff want to build their next decade.
That’s where Lambiase’s move stings in a particular way. Engineers and strategists talk, and so do the people they trust. If a senior figure leaves and then starts describing life elsewhere as more stable, more empowering, or simply more enjoyable, that can have a gravitational pull. Chandhok raised a scenario Red Bull will privately be desperate to avoid: Lambiase picking up the phone to the engineers who’ve formed his orbit and saying, in essence, *you should see this place in Woking*.
F1 history is littered with those chain reactions. One big departure rarely remains one departure, not when the departing person is a hub. Chandhok referenced the way figures like Newey and Ross Brawn have, at various points, brought a wider ecosystem of talent with them. It’s not only about the individual; it’s about the network.
And in 2026 – with the sport already deep into its new technical era – this sort of personnel turbulence cuts sharper than it used to. The competitive gaps are tight, the operational details decide results, and the value of institutional memory has arguably never been higher. Losing people who understand your internal tools, your decision-making rhythms, and your pressure points doesn’t show up as a neat deficit on a spreadsheet, but it can surface later as slower development loops, messier weekends, or a team that suddenly looks less sure of itself in the moments that matter.
Chandhok’s proposed antidote is telling, and it’s not subtle: go shopping at Mercedes.
“Right now, you want to attract people from Mercedes,” he said. “They’re the ones winning. You have to try and rebuild.”
That suggestion carries its own bite because it acknowledges a shift in the sport’s centre of gravity. Red Bull, the team others used to raid, is now being advised to reverse the flow and target the standard-setter. Mekies’ challenge isn’t simply replacing job titles; it’s restoring the sense that Red Bull is a destination again, not a stepping stone or, worse, a place you survive before moving on.
Chandhok also made a point that will resonate inside any team factory: “good people attract other good people”. It’s the reason a marquee hire can be worth more than just their own output. A “big-name signing”, as Chandhok called it, can act like a beacon — proof that the project has momentum, that the internal atmosphere is healthy, and that senior leadership knows what it wants to be.
Of course, there’s an extra layer of sensitivity here because of Verstappen. Lambiase isn’t just another senior engineer; he’s Verstappen’s trusted sounding board and, at times, his on-air conscience. Red Bull will publicly insist it can manage any transition — and teams often do — but relationships like that aren’t plug-and-play. Even if Verstappen stays locked in, the loss of a familiar counterpart changes the texture of a race weekend.
For McLaren, the upside is obvious: they’re adding a proven operator with the credibility to shape process, standards and culture. For Red Bull, the immediate question is how to stop the bleeding — not with a press release or a brave face, but with the kind of internal fixes that keep talented people from opening LinkedIn in the first place.
Because the uncomfortable truth in Chandhok’s warning is this: once a team gets a reputation for being in flux, it doesn’t take much for the next key person to start thinking about their timing. And in Formula 1, timing is everything.
