Max Verstappen’s Red Bull engineer Gianpiero Lambiase to join McLaren

Lambiase, currently Red Bull’s head of race engineering, will become the third senior Red Bull figure to join McLaren in recent years.

Rob Marshall joined as chief designer at the start of 2024, and former Red Bull head of race strategy Will Courtenay became McLaren’s sporting director in January this year.

Red Bull have also lost chief technical officer Adrian Newey and sporting director Jonathan Wheatley since the start of 2024. They both left before former team principal Christian Horner was fired in July 2025.

Lambiase will join a McLaren race-operations support structure that already includes Courtenay and his boss, racing director Randy Singh.

The plan is for Lambiase’s new position to allow Stella more freedom to focus on the leadership aspects of his role.

Stella is already doing two jobs – alongside being team principal, he is effectively also technical director.

The team’s engineering structure sees the three technical directors Peter Prodromou, Mark Temple and Neil Houldey – who are responsible in turn for aerodynamics, performance and engineering – as well as Marshall report into Stella when it comes to car design.

Lambiase will fit in by taking strain off Stella on the racing and trackside part of the business.

Reports that the recruitment of Lambiase is a precursor to Stella leaving to join Ferrari are said by McLaren insiders to be incorrect.

Lambiase is known for his close relationship to four-time world champion Verstappen, with whom he has worked since the Dutchman joined Red Bull for the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix.

Verstappen said at the last race in Japan that he was considering his future in F1 as a result of not enjoying driving the new cars.