Red Bull warned Lambiase exit could trigger exodus

Karun Chandhok says Red Bull need a “big-name signing” after Gianpiero Lambiase’s planned move to McLaren, warning the team’s latest senior departure could turn a difficult period into a deeper talent drain unless Laurent Mekies can make the operation attractive again.

Speaking on Sky’s The F1 Show, the former Formula 1 driver and Sky Sports analyst argued that Lambiase’s exit is more than the loss of a senior engineer. Max Verstappen’s long-time race engineer is set to leave for a senior role at McLaren by 2028, and Chandhok believes that raises the risk of further departures from the same engineering group.

Chandhok said Red Bull’s problem now goes beyond pure performance. He pointed to the fact the team won six of the last nine Grands Prix last season and said the car “improved a hell of a lot,” adding that it was arguably the fastest, or at least equal fastest, through much of that period. “Clearly, people need more than just success on track,” he said. “For whatever reason, this brain drain has gone on and there’s a cultural shift that has happened throughout the organisation.”

That leaves Mekies and Red Bull’s leadership in Austria with what Chandhok called “a big job” to work out “how are we going to stop this? How are we going to stop the brain drain? How do we make ourselves attractive?” He argued Red Bull are now trying to rebuild at a time when Mercedes has become the benchmark for recruitment. “Right now, you want to attract people from Mercedes. They’re the ones winning,” he said.

The competitive picture has only sharpened that concern. Mercedes dominated the first three rounds of the 2026 season, while Red Bull sit sixth in the constructors’ standings on 16 points. In that context, Chandhok’s warning was that staffing losses can quickly become self-reinforcing.

“One of the things that they’ve got to be worried about is good people attract other good people,” he said. Chandhok then laid out the scenario Red Bull must avoid: “How long before ‘GP’ starts calling the other 20 people who are sitting in their engineering office and saying, ‘Hey, you know what guys, this place down at Woking, this is a really nice place to work. How do you fancy coming down here?’”

He said the danger is that “that core group” starts “to break up,” something Formula 1 has seen before when leading figures change teams. Chandhok pointed to Adrian Newey and Ross Brawn as examples of senior names whose arrivals helped pull trusted staff with them.

That is why he sees Red Bull’s next move as critical. The team has already lost Adrian Newey, Rob Marshall, Will Courtenay and Jonathan Wheatley, while Christian Horner and Helmut Marko have also left. For Chandhok, the answer is not simply replacing technical expertise one role at a time but changing the perception of the team in the paddock.

“They need a big-name signing, not just for the skill set that that person can bring, but the people that they will attract,” Chandhok said, with Red Bull now needing its next senior hire to stop the brain drain from becoming a structural setback.