Racing
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Laurent Mekies says Gianpiero Lambiase is heading to McLaren to become a future team principal, sharpening a public disagreement over the Red Bull engineer’s long-term role in Woking.
Speaking at the Canadian Grand Prix press conference in Montreal, the Red Bull team principal said his understanding came directly from discussions with Lambiase before the move was agreed. “Look, it’s certainly my understanding that GP is going to McLaren to become a team principal,” Mekies said. “That’s what I told you at the time.” He added that “we had a number of conversations before he was going to make the decision” and made clear that, in his view, the substance of those talks mattered more than any timetable. “Now, don’t ask me if it’s going to happen. The timing of it is none of my business. I can just tell you the content of our conversations.”
That is stronger than McLaren’s official position. The team announced in April that Lambiase will join as Chief Racing Officer and report to Andrea Stella, with the move set to happen no later than 2028 because he remains under contract with Red Bull until then. Lambiase, 45, has been Max Verstappen’s race engineer since 2016 and was promoted to Red Bull’s head of racing in late 2024.
The gap between the two versions has been hanging over the paddock since Miami, when Mekies first indicated that Lambiase was leaving Red Bull to become McLaren’s boss. Zak Brown pushed back on that suggestion at the time, saying Mekies “knows something I don’t,” before going to Red Bull hospitality to discuss the matter.
With Stella seated alongside him in Montreal, McLaren’s team principal again framed the hire as a strengthening of the existing structure rather than a declared succession plan. Andrea Stella, McLaren team principal, said he “very strongly wanted GP to join McLaren” because he is “personally very stretched” in his current role and needs “a strong group of leaders” around him.
Stella said Lambiase’s arrival was part of “a vision of creating additive leadership that can integrate with the present leadership and create a stronger and stronger team at McLaren.” He did not directly contradict Mekies’s account, but he stopped well short of confirming that Lambiase is being lined up as his replacement. “Any other speculation leads us back to the silly season,” Stella said.
That leaves McLaren’s official plan and Mekies’s version of Lambiase’s expectations still sitting side by side. The only firm timeline remains that Lambiase is due to arrive by 2028, which means the question now is whether McLaren has signed a senior sporting leader to support Stella, or begun a longer-term handover at the top of the team.