'Red Bull in crisis as Verstappen's engineer moves to McLaren'

This week, it was announced that Max Verstappen's race engineer and Red Bull Racing’s Head of Racing, Gianpiero Lambiase, will leave the team and join McLaren no later than 2028. This comes after Will Courtenay and Rob Marshall already made the same move.

Moreover, in recent years, Christian Horner, Jonathan Wheatley, Adrian Newey, and many others have left the Milton Keynes-based team.

What are the ramifications of this transfer? How does it affect Verstappen? Jim and Ben discuss all of that in F1 Paddock Update's latest episode.

Together with the duo of Lewis Hamilton and Peter Bonnington 'Bono', Max Verstappen and Gianpiero Lambiase form one of the most well-known driver-race engineer partnerships in Formula 1. It is also the longest-standing one at the moment, following Hamilton’s move to Ferrari, with 'Bono' now working with Kimi Antonelli.

After winning his first title in 2021, Verstappen underlined that once Lambiase quits, he would do so as well. In a different interview, the race engineer also referred to Verstappen as his little brother.

In 2025, after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Lambiase was emotional over the team radio. Throughout the season, he had to miss multiple Grands Prix due to personal reasons.

Verstappen said: "I’m very happy to be able to work with someone that passionate. Of course, he is my race engineer, but I see him as my friend. We have lived through so many emotional things together and fantastic achievements.