Max Verstappen is going to lose the most important voice in his cockpit. Gianpiero Lambiase, the race engineer who has called Verstappen's races since 2016, will leave Red Bull Racing for McLaren from the start of the 2028 season — and according to Sky Sports' Craig Slater, the move materially raises the chance Verstappen himself walks away from Milton Keynes.
Lambiase, universally known on the pit wall as GP, has been the constant in Verstappen's seat across four world championships. Slater, who broke the news on Sky Sports F1, was careful to push back on the loudest theory in the paddock: that this was a team principal job in disguise.
"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 Red Bull nor McLaren has issued an official statement, Slater said, but the move has been confirmed by senior figures at both teams. The Sky reporter framed it as the latest stage of a multi-year talent drain from Red Bull to McLaren that has already taken Adrian Newey, Jonathan Wheatley, Will Courtney and Rob Marshall out of Milton Keynes.
The most consequential detail in Slater's reporting concerned an offer Lambiase quietly turned down. "Lambiase had the opportunity to actually join Aston Martin as team principal over the winter," Slater 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 lands hardest for Red Bull. Verstappen has long named four people as the non-negotiable pillars of his racing life: his father Jos, manager Raymond Vermeulen, Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko and Lambiase. Marko's expanded influence has already been clipped by Mekies' arrival as team principal. Lambiase's exit, on a two-year horizon, removes another.
"Max has said in interviews in the past, when Lambiase goes, I go," Slater noted. Asked directly whether Wednesday's news made it more likely that Verstappen leaves Red Bull — or even takes a sabbatical from F1 — at the end of this year, the Sky reporter did not hedge. "The answer is absolutely yes."
There is a separate piece of speculation that Slater shut down on the spot. "People might be reading as well that Lambiase going to McLaren is a sign that Andrea Stella is leaving as team principal there to go to Ferrari," he said. "Absolute rubbish, is the response I've had from a senior figure at McLaren on that. 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."
In McLaren's framing, Lambiase will take on enough of Stella's race-weekend duties to free the Italian to focus on broader leadership inside Woking. In Red Bull's framing, the team has another two years to keep Verstappen happy enough to override an exit clause that the rest of the grid has spent twelve months trying to trigger. Slater's Wednesday read on the odds is not the answer Mekies wanted.
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*Originally published on [News Formula One](https://newsformula.one/article/gianpiero-lambiase-mclaren-2028-verstappen-exit-likelihood). Visit for full coverage.*
