{"id":374562,"date":"2026-04-11T13:11:22","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T13:11:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/374562\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T13:11:22","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T13:11:22","slug":"max-verstappens-race-engineer-to-leave-red-bull-for-f1-rival-mclaren","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/374562\/","title":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen&#8217;s race engineer to leave Red Bull for F1 rival McLaren"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.1news.co.nz\/2026\/03\/30\/verstappen-questions-f1-future-says-this-season-could-be-his-last\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Max Verstappen<\/a>&#8216;s race engineer and close ally GianPiero Lambiase is set to leave the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.1news.co.nz\/2025\/12\/03\/liam-lawson-keeps-racing-bulls-seat-for-2026\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Red Bull team<\/a> in 2028 and will join Formula 1 rival McLaren as its chief racing officer.<\/p>\n<p>Red Bull said Lambiase, who is also Red Bull&#8217;s head of racing, will leave when his current contract expires.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8216;GP&#8217; is a valued member of the team, which he joined in 2015,&#8221; Red Bull said. &#8220;Until his planned departure, &#8216;GP&#8217; continues in his roles as Head of Racing and as Race Engineer to Max Verstappen. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.1news.co.nz\/2026\/03\/29\/f1-liam-lawson-to-start-14th-on-japanese-grand-prix-grid\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">team<\/a> and he are fully committed to add more success to our strong track record together.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/mclaren-driver-lando-norris-of-britain-sits-in-a-car-during-EMCG3OCEW5CNLAQOTD7FVTSWCQ.jpg\" alt=\"McLaren driver Lando Norris of Britain sits in a car during the qualifying session of the Japanese Formula One Grand Prix at the Suzuka Circuit in Suzuka, Japan.\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" loading=\"eager\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"ImageMetadata__MetadataParagraph-sc-hi5x8q-0 cWTYyG image-metadata\">McLaren driver Lando Norris of Britain sits in a car during the qualifying session of the Japanese Formula One Grand Prix at the Suzuka Circuit in Suzuka, Japan. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n<p>The move to McLaren will see team principal Andrea Stella delegate part of his current role. Lambiase would answer to Stella.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The role of the Chief Racing Officer already exists within the team\u2019s structure with overall leadership of the race team. These duties are currently managed by Andrea Stella in addition to his role as Team Principal,&#8221; McLaren said.<\/p>\n<p>The move could fuel speculation around Verstappen&#8217;s future in F1. The four-time champion has been a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.1news.co.nz\/2026\/03\/27\/quite-punishing-liam-lawson-on-new-f1-cars-ahead-of-japan-gp\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">vocal critic<\/a> of the increased reliance on electrical power in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.1news.co.nz\/2026\/03\/09\/lawson-says-car-lost-all-power-at-start-of-f1-opener-in-melbourne\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">new generation of F1 cars<\/a>, has his own racing projects outside of F1 and has talked about wanting to spend more time with his family.<\/p>\n<p>He told BBC radio last month he would consider his future and didn&#8217;t rule out leaving the sport at the end of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen&#8216;s race engineer and close ally GianPiero Lambiase is set to leave the Red Bull team in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,64,40,38,41,39,1745],"class_list":{"0":"post-374562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-north-america","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories","15":"tag-uk-europe"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}