Why McLaren poached Gianpiero Lambiase

‘GP’ Lambiase will depart Red Bull Racing to join McLaren for the 2028 season in the chief racing officer role.

That will spell the end of stint at RBR working alongside Verstappen that to this point has yielded four world championships, cementing the partnership as iconic in modern F1.

Lambiase’s McLaren move has sparked a number of theories regarding both Verstappen’s future in F1 and McLaren’s long-term plans regarding current team principal Andrea Stella.

While Brown admits that succession planning was part of the decision making, the primary reason to sign Lambiase is to ensure Stella isn’t wearing too many hats at once.

According to the McLaren CEO, Stella is currently holding down three jobs – team principal, race team operations and overseeing the three-man technical director squad of Rob Marshall (Engineering & Design), Peter Prodromou (Aerodynamics) and Mark Temple (Performance).

That is a “tall order”, says Brown, with Lambiase set to lighten Stella’s workload with the race team operations.

“I’m very excited to have GP join us,” said Brown.

“My job as CEO to make sure that we have stability and visibility to the future. I think we’ve got a lot of talented individuals that have room for growth.

“[Lambiase will] be on the racing operations side. Andrea, in reality, kind of has three jobs. I think we sometimes talk about that he has two [jobs], he actually has three.

“He’s the team principal. He runs the racing team. And he also plays a big role in kind of a technical director capacity. Andre is the glue that brings that [technical director team] together.

“Now you’re seeing most teams with a CEO and team principal, now you’re seeing the team principal role evolve, and these teams are so big that if you’re going to be great in all those roles… I think Andrea is very capable of doing two jobs. Asking him to do three jobs is a tall order.

“So I think GP will come in and play a great role there.

“And, you know, my job is always to be looking down the road as to who can play and grow within the sport. Given GP’s experience and his age, he is someone I think that can be here for a long time at McLaren and grow.”