F1's Gianpiero Lambiase: Born in Bedford, made in Milton Keynes and Max Verstappen's closest ally

Credit for photo: Red Bull Content Pool — Photo: © IMAGO

Gianpiero Lambiase

Gianpiero Lambiase: Born in Bedford, made in Milton Keynes and Max Verstappen's closest ally

All you need to know about GP

Sam Cook Digital Journalist

Sports Journalist who has been covering motorsport since 2023

Wednesday 22 April 2026 10:57 Updated: 11:11

Gianpiero Lambiase - race engineer of four-time F1 world champion Max Verstappen - is leaving Red Bull to instead head to McLaren.

Lambiase has been with the Milton Keynes-based outfit since the 2015 season, but will call time on his Red Bull career around 2028, instead joining McLaren as their chief racing officer.

The British-Italian national is a close friend of Verstappen's, having been his race engineer since 2016, and question marks are circling about whether Verstappen will want to continue at Red Bull without Lambiase there.

But who is Lambiase? And why is he so important to Red Bull?

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Early life and career

Lambiase was born in Bedford back in 1980 but to Italian parents, which is the reason for his dual nationality.

While he is best known for his work at Red Bull, Lambiase actually started his career in F1 with the Silverstone-based outfit back in 2005, who in the 11 seasons that he worked there were known as Jordan, Midland, Spyker and Force India.

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In 2008, Lambiase became a performance engineer at Force India, and worked closely with Giancarlo Fisichella.

This included guiding the Italian in his training regime and helping him to improve his racing prowess. It was a role that Lambiase undertook for two seasons, helping Fisichella secure a podium in 2009 and a pole position at the 2009 Belgian Grand Prix.

Lambiase's race engineer career

Lambiase's first gig as a race engineer came in 2010 at Force India with Vitantonio Liuzzi, before working at the same team with Paul di Resta and Sergio Perez.

Lambiase joined Red Bull in 2015, replacing Sebastian Vettel's legendary race engineer Guillaume 'Rocky' Rocquelin for the all-powerful Milton Keynes team.

He initially began his job at Red Bull as the race engineer for former Red Bull star Daniil Kvyat. That was until the Russian was replaced by Verstappen after just four races of the 2016 season, and Lambiase then became the Dutchman's race engineer.

Lambiase's current position at Red Bull is the most senior that he has held in his F1 career to date, being promoted to head of racing back in 2024 while still also performing his duties as Verstappen's race engineer.

The McLaren role that will come round in 2028, however, will be more senior still, working closely with team principal Andrea Stella as chief racing officer.

What will Lambiase exit mean for Verstappen's future?

Verstappen's long-term future at Red Bull has been called into question recently despite being contracted until the end of the 2028 season with the team, due to Red Bull's poor start to the season.

A video recently resurfaced from 2021 showing Verstappen talking about his race engineer and great friend Lambiase.

Verstappen can be heard in the video saying: "I told him (Lambiase) that I only work with him. As soon as he stops, I stop."

Lambiase is expected to stay at Red Bull until around 2028, meaning we could yet still have two seasons of the Verstappen-Lambiase team radio duo.

F1 Red Bull Max Verstappen McLaren Gianpiero Lambiase