Lambiase’s leaves Red Bull, Verstappen up next
According to a Yahoo Sports report on Sky Sports News' information, Gianpiero Lambiase has agreed to join McLaren from 2028 in a role supporting Andrea Stella. That would be a major move on its own, but the reason it has landed so heavily is simple: Lambiase is not just another senior engineer in the paddock. As Formula1.com noted in its look at Verstappen and Lambiase after the 2025 season, he has been Verstappen’s race engineer since the driver arrived at Red Bull in 2016, which makes any split between them feel bigger than an ordinary team reshuffle.
Why Verstappen is part of the same story
The Verstappen angle is not speculation pulled from nowhere. It exists because Verstappen himself has repeatedly made clear how much Lambiase means to him. In the Formula1.com piece on their relationship, he said: “Of course, he is my race engineer, but I see him as my friend.” That line helps explain why the McLaren report has immediately gone beyond Lambiase alone. When a driver talks about a race engineer in those terms, people inside Formula 1 are always going to wonder whether one move could eventually lead to another.
There is also already some recent history behind the wider Verstappen discussion. In a Sky Sports report from March 29, Verstappen said he was considering quitting Formula 1 at the end of 2026 because he was unhappy with the new regulations and was “thinking about everything inside this paddock.” That does not mean Lambiase’s reported move automatically tells us Verstappen is leaving too, but it does mean the story lands in a paddock that was already talking about his long term future before this latest development arrived.
It points to uncertainty, not a confirmed exit
The most careful way to frame this is to say the Lambiase report sharpens the conversation around Verstappen, but does not settle it. Formula1.com’s report on Verstappen’s Red Bull extension states that he is contracted through at least the end of 2028, so there is still a clear official position on paper. At the same time, the recent Sky Sports reporting on his doubts about continuing in F1 shows why people are unlikely to treat this as just another backroom change. Right now, the fairest conclusion is that Lambiase leaving would not confirm a Verstappen exit, but it would make the idea of a future change look less far fetched than it did before.
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Why Red Bull cannot ignore
Losing a senior figure to McLaren would matter anyway, but losing someone so closely linked to Verstappen cuts deeper because it affects one of the most trusted relationships inside the team. For McLaren, the reported hire looks like another serious step in strengthening the group around Andrea Stella. For Red Bull, it raises a harder question, whether keeping Verstappen happy in the years ahead is only about the car, or whether the people around him matter just as much. That is why this story has moved so quickly from one engineer’s future to a broader conversation about where Verstappen sees himself next.
Sources: Yahoo Sports, citing Sky Sports News, Sky Sports, Formula1.com.
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