- After Max Verstappen won his first Singapore Grand Prix, Red Bull sent race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase, not a team boss, up to the podium to collect the constructors’ trophy.
- Tom Hart takes over Verstappen’s radio at the United States Grand Prix in Austin and keeps the seat through Brazil and Las Vegas, with Lambiase set to return only for the final three rounds in Mexico, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.
- Hart had reportedly agreed to join Williams alongside Alex Albon for 2027 before Verstappen asked him to stay at Red Bull and take the headset instead.
A Trophy Walk That Said What Nobody Would Say Out Loud
Red Bull could have sent anyone up the Marina Bay podium steps to collect the constructors’ trophy after Verstappen finally won the one race that had eluded him for eight years. Team principal Laurent Mekies could have gone himself, as team bosses usually do. Instead the team sent Gianpiero Lambiase, the engineer who has sat on the other end of Verstappen’s radio through every one of his four world championships.
Verstappen noticed. “I didn’t expect that,” he said afterward.
Then he told a story that put the gesture in a different light. A year earlier in Las Vegas, Lambiase had told him it “might be the last time” the two of them shared a podium together. Verstappen brushed it off and told him they would win together many more times. Singapore proved him right on the scoreboard and wrong on the timeline. “But I think I jinxed him with that,” Verstappen said.
Nobody in the team called it a goodbye. Red Bull had not confirmed the McLaren move to the public at that point. But a trophy handed to an engineer instead of an executive, set next to a joke about jinxing him, works as a quiet funeral for a partnership held before anyone wrote the obituary. Podium protocol usually puts a team principal or a sponsor guest on that walk. Choosing the race engineer instead was a small decision that said more than any press release Red Bull had drafted up to that point.
A Broken Radio Nobody Could Blame on the Driver
Verstappen won Singapore fighting a faulty radio link for stretches of the race, the kind of fault that usually produces a stream of complaints on the team channel. Mekies said afterward that the problem sat with Red Bull’s equipment, not with Verstappen, and he credited how driver and engineer adapted on the fly with a connection that kept cutting out. For a pairing built on fast, clipped radio calls, winning a race with the line barely working said plenty about how much shorthand Lambiase and Verstappen have built that no longer needs full sentences to function.
What a Race Engineer Actually Gives a Driver
F1 fans know Lambiase for blunt radio messages, the kind that have told Verstappen off mid lap more than once over the years. That bluntness only works on top of trust built over hundreds of races. A race engineer is the person a driver hears at 200 mph when a tire starts going off two laps before the data confirms it, the one who decides whether to deliver bad news now or hold it, the one voice allowed to break into a driver’s own fight with the car mid corner. Strategy calls come from a wider group on the pit wall. The bond that gets a driver to actually believe a call in the heat of a lap gets built by one person, race after race, over years.
Lambiase joined Red Bull’s engineering ranks in 2011 and took over Verstappen’s car in 2016, years before anyone outside the garage knew what Verstappen would become. That gap counts for something. He watched Verstappen grow from a teenager thrown into F1 with a point to prove into a four-time champion, and he did it from the seat next to him, not above him. They won four titles together in a row, from 2021 through 2024, through title fights, team orders disputes, and the kind of radio arguments that became their own strange entertainment for fans who tuned in for the fight on track and stayed for the one on the airwaves.
Other long pairings in the sport have shown what happens when they split. Lewis Hamilton’s run with engineer Peter Bonnington lasted more than a decade at Mercedes before Hamilton’s move to Ferrari broke it up, and Hamilton spent much of his first season there rebuilding that same shorthand with a new voice in his ear, admitting more than once that the adjustment took longer than he expected. Felipe Massa and Rob Smedley worked together long enough that Smedley followed him from Ferrari to Williams rather than let the partnership end. Even junior-formula pairings that get broken up early tend to get remembered by the drivers involved for years afterward. These relationships rarely dissolve quietly, and they almost never end mid season while the trophies are still arriving.
Why Red Bull Is Managing the Exit in Pieces
Lambiase is headed to McLaren, a straight move to the team Red Bull has spent the last two seasons fighting for the championship. Red Bull is not waiting for the year to finish before starting the handover. Tom Hart takes the radio for the Austin round of the United States Grand Prix and keeps it through Brazil and Las Vegas. Lambiase is expected back for the final three rounds, Mexico, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, though Red Bull and McLaren have not settled exactly when he can start work at his new team.
The twist in the plan is Hart himself. He had reportedly agreed to join Williams for 2027, pairing with Alex Albon on the radio there, a move that would have let Albon work with an engineer he rated highly as Williams tries to climb back up the grid. That deal fell apart after Verstappen made clear he wanted Hart, specifically, to take over from Lambiase. Red Bull kept him rather than lose two race engineers out of the same garage inside a single year, and Williams loses an engineer it thought it had already signed. Red Bull keeps continuity on its lead driver’s car through a title fight. Hart inherits a seat that four world championships built, with no preseason and no test days to settle into it, and a driver who made it known he picked Hart over anyone else the team could have offered.
Austin Without the Voice That Won Four Titles
Verstappen arrives in Austin for a race weekend he has not faced in years: the voice in his ear will not be Lambiase’s. Hart gets three rounds, Austin, Brazil and Las Vegas, to build under race pressure what took Lambiase years to establish, while Verstappen fights for position in a championship that is still live. Lambiase then returns for the final three rounds before he leaves for good, a short, odd coda to a partnership that outlasted four championships and well over two hundred races together.
The Singapore podium reads differently now than it did in the moment. Red Bull sent its most important engineer up those steps not as a courtesy, but as its own quiet way of marking an ending before either side said the word out loud. Verstappen got his trophy and his first Singapore win. He also got, without asking for it, one more photo with the man who has been in his ear through every title he has ever won.
Sources:
- crash.net – Max Verstappen’s replacement Gianpiero Lambiase set for Austin F1 debut
- Yahoo Sports – Verstappen to miss Lambiase for three grands prix
- RacingNews365 – Max Verstappen reveals he almost jinxed himself over long-time Red Bull ally
- GPFans – Verstappen, Red Bull and Lambiase’s Singapore Grand Prix podium
- PlanetF1 – Red Bull finds Gianpiero Lambiase replacement after Williams move abandoned
