Former Red Bull driver David Coulthard predicts a dilemma for his old employer in the coming years. Last week it was announced that Gianpiero Lambiase, Max Verstappen’s regular race engineer, will move to McLaren after 2027. According to expert Coulthard, this will lead to a moment next season when Lambiase will no longer be involved in development for ‘2027 and beyond’: ‘That will be a difficult situation’.
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Max Verstappen and race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase have been working together at Red Bull for ten years, but that will come to an end after 2027. The British engineer with Italian roots will then exchange the Austrian racing stable for McLaren. Not only does this mean that Verstappen will have to work with a new race engineer, but also that Red Bull, according to former driver David Coulthard, will find itself in a ‘difficult situation’.
“‘GP’ (Lambiase, ed.) still has a contract with Red Bull. We expect him to serve out that contract,” Coulthard says in the Up To Speed podcast. The former Formula 1 driver himself also drove for Red Bull between 2005 and 2008. “But one of the tricky points for Red Bull is, of course, that he can’t just walk out of the factory with a laptop full of data at the end of 2027, but what’s in your head, you can take with you.”
Dilemma for Red Bull
Coulthard therefore predicts that Red Bull will face a dilemma in 2027. “So there will come a point where they will want to say: ‘Listen, you can’t really work on this car, or you certainly can’t be involved in discussions about developments for 2027 and beyond.’ So that will be a difficult situation.”
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The Scot speaks from experience. At the end of 1995, he left Williams as a driver for McLaren. “I had already signed with McLaren, and you still go through the race weekend normally. But I was no longer allowed into certain parts of the factory when I came to Williams, which is understandable because I was moving to another team. So that starts to undermine the relationship and makes it a bit of a compromise.”
Advantage for McLaren?
According to Coulthard, McLaren hopes that Red Bull will decide to let Lambiase go earlier. “So what McLaren, I’m sure, would hope is that Red Bull would release GP from his contract early, waive the obligation to pay his salary, and allow him to start at McLaren early,” said the Scottish former F1 driver. “But on the other hand, why would they want to do something that gives your competitors an advantage?”
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