Former Formula 1 driver Karun Chandhok advises Red Bull on how to stop the ongoing ‘braindrain’ at the team. Last Thursday it was announced that Gianpiero Lambiase will leave the team. Earlier, among others, Adrian Newey and Jonathan Wheatley also left the Austrian racing team. According to Chandhok, Red Bull needs a new ‘big name’ to halt the brain drain.
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Gianpiero Lambiase is the latest Red Bull top executive in a now long line to leave the Austrian racing team. Last Thursday, Red Bull announced that Max Verstappen’s regular race engineer will leave at the end of 2027 and move to competitor McLaren. Earlier, Rob Marshall, Will Courtenay, Adrian Newey, Jonathan Wheatley, and Helmut Marko also left the team, while former team principal Christian Horner was replaced by Laurent Mekies.
Former Formula 1 driver Karun Chandhok – who raced in eleven Grands Prix between 2010 and 2011 – sees how even Verstappen’s impressive comeback in 2025 cannot stop the brain drain at Red Bull. “If you look back at Red Bull last year (in 2025, ed.), you see that they won six of the last nine Grands Prix,” Chandhok analyzes in The F1 Show podcast. “The car has improved enormously. They probably had the fastest car in the last part of the season last year, or at least one of the fastest. It’s clear that people need more than just success on the track.”
‘Braindrain’ at Red Bull
According to Chandhok, the biggest challenge for team principal Laurent Mekies and the other Red Bull top executives is to stop the ‘braindrain’. “Right now, you want to attract people from Mercedes. They are the ones winning. You have to try to rebuild,” advises the former F1 driver. “And I think one of the things they should worry about is that good people attract other good people.”
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Chandhok further explains the latter with a recent example. “How long will it take before ‘GP’ (Lambiase, ed.) calls the other twenty people at their engineering office and says: ‘Hey, you know what, guys? That place here in Woking is really a nice place to work. Would you like to come here?’ And how long before that core group starts to fall apart? Adrian Newey also moved from team to team and took good people with him. Ross Brawn did the same. I think Red Bull really needs to worry about that.”
The current analyst therefore has advice for Red Bull to turn the tide. “Red Bull needs a big name, not only because of the skills that person can bring, but also because of the people he or she will attract.”
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