The two-year warning shot has landed at Red Bull Racing. Gianpiero Lambiase — the race engineer who has been Max Verstappen's voice on the radio since 2016 — will leave Milton Keynes for McLaren at the start of the 2028 season. According to Sky Sports' Craig Slater, who broke the story on Sky F1, the move materially raises the probability that Verstappen himself follows him out of the door.
Slater was insistent that the headline-grabbing version of the move — that Lambiase has been recruited as a team principal in waiting — is wrong. "It isn't an obvious promotion. There isn't a job title for the new role he's taking on, exactly," Slater told Sky. "But it's been explained to me that it will be akin to being the head of race engineering, which is what he currently is at Red Bull, in actual fact. So not the case that he's going as team principal to replace Andrea Stella. That has been made very clear to me."
Neither team has put out an official statement. Slater said the move had been confirmed by senior figures at both Red Bull and McLaren, and framed it as the latest stage of a multi-year talent migration that has already taken Adrian Newey, Jonathan Wheatley, Will Courtney and Rob Marshall out of Milton Keynes — most of them ultimately to Woking.
The most consequential detail in Slater's report was a job offer Lambiase quietly turned down a few months ago. "Lambiase had the opportunity to actually join Aston Martin as team principal over the winter," the Sky reporter said. "Part of the reason he remained at Red Bull was because Max had indicated to him that he planned to stay and see if he could make a go of things under Laurent Mekies. So you do ask yourself the question, has Verstappen's stance on his long-term future changed a little bit and has that meant that Lambiase has had to think rather more about number one — that's to say his own next career progression."
That is the part that hurts Red Bull most. Verstappen has long named four people as the non-negotiable pillars of his racing life: his father Jos, manager Raymond Vermeulen, advisor Helmut Marko and Lambiase. Marko's influence has already been clipped under Mekies. Lambiase, on a two-year horizon, is now leaving too.
"Max has said in interviews in the past, when Lambiase goes, I go," Slater noted. Asked directly whether the news made it more likely Verstappen leaves Red Bull — or even takes a sabbatical from F1 — by the end of this year, Slater did not hedge. "The answer is absolutely yes."
One piece of speculation he shut down on the spot: the theory that Lambiase's move is a sign Stella is leaving McLaren for Ferrari. "Absolute rubbish, is the response I've had from a senior figure at McLaren on that," Slater said. "He is 1,000% staying as team principal, was involved in the decision-making, and partly instigated it to try and bring Lambiase to McLaren." Lambiase, per the same source, will take on enough of Stella's race-weekend duties to free the Italian to focus on broader leadership inside Woking.
For Red Bull, the practical impact begins long before 2028. Mekies now has two seasons in which to either deliver a car Verstappen wants to stay in, or watch the most central voice in the four-time champion's racing life go to a rival that does not need any more help.
