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Andrea Stella has shut down suggestions that Gianpiero Lambiase is being lined up as McLaren’s future team principal, insisting the Red Bull race engineer’s 2028 move is meant to strengthen the current leadership structure rather than change it.
The clarification came after speculation flared during the Miami Grand Prix weekend, when Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies suggested Lambiase’s arrival at McLaren could eventually lead to him taking over the top job in Woking. That quickly turned a senior hire into a wider question about McLaren’s long-term governance and whether Stella was preparing a succession plan.
Stella rejected that reading and said the idea behind the recruitment was much simpler and much more immediate. McLaren announced last month that Lambiase will join the team in 2028 and report directly to Stella within its leadership structure. According to Stella, that arrangement is designed to add depth around the current management rather than reshape it.
Speaking to media including RacingNews365, Andrea Stella, McLaren team principal, said the team’s thinking was centered on building strength at the top. “What I said before is that McLaren, for us, it’s important to employ the best talents in Formula 1,” he said. He added that “employing GP is part of this vision, which is a vision of creating additive leadership that can integrate with the present leadership and create a stronger and stronger team at McLaren.”
That explanation also exposed the practical reason Stella pushed for the move. Rather than presenting Lambiase as a future replacement, Stella described the hire as support for a team boss whose workload has become too broad. “So, I very strongly wanted GP to join McLaren,” he said. “I am personally very stretched in my role as team principal, and I need a strong group of leaders working with me.”
That matters because it frames McLaren’s move as an operational decision as much as a strategic one. Lambiase is one of the most high-profile engineers in the paddock through his work with Max Verstappen at Red Bull, and bringing him in gives McLaren another senior figure inside a structure Stella says needs more leadership capacity around him.
Stella also placed the appointment in the context of a longer-term project being led with McLaren CEO Zak Brown. He said the aim is to build “the strongest team,” not just for the present but for the future as well. In that sense, the significance of Lambiase’s arrival is less about who might run McLaren one day and more about how the team wants to organize itself to sustain performance over the seasons ahead.
For now, Stella’s message was that the hierarchy is not under review. “The plan is very clear,” he said. “Any other speculation leads us back to the silly season.”