Aston Martin, another Max Verstappen loyalist in Red Bull tempted by team change

Max Verstappen and Red Bull cemented their relationship in the second half of the 2025 season, after months of great tension. Yet something could still change in perspective: obviously not with a view to 2026, but perhaps for the following season. And once again tempting the formidable Dutchman could be that Aston Martin that has already put Adrian Newey under contract and would now be hitting on one of the pivotal figures in the four titles won by the dominant 2021-2024 seasons. That is the highly trusted track engineer Gianpiero Lambiase, one of the few able to hold his own against the great champion’s relentless hunger for success.

Marco Enzo Venturini

According to what has been gathered by ‘The Race’ an authoritative British publication, the increasingly ambitious Aston Martin would be trying in these vacation weeks for Formula 1 (at least on the track) to offer an important role in the team to Lambiase. This would not be a simple track engineer job, the one he held for years at Red Bull, but much more. In fact, there is talk of a management position “potentially at the level of team principal or managing director, in a bid to revamp the’entire team structure”.

The transfer cannot be ruled out in the immediate term, making it necessary for Red Bull to identify a new track engineer for Verstappen. In that sense, the right man is already there: he is Simon Rennie, who has already occasionally served in that role. In an Aston Martin that already has Newey and may soon find Lambiase on the payroll as well, however, the Dutchman would restart in 2026 in a highly revamped structure. And, in the event of a false start in the new season, the call of the engineer who accompanied him by radio in 71 Grands Prix and no less than four world championships won could prove to be more than just a temptation.

Born in 1980 and English (from Bedford to be precise), Gianpiero Lambiase became famous to all world Formula 1 fans after the 2024 Hungarian Grand Prix d’Hungary. There he managed to quell Verstappen&#8217s fury by responding to him with a firmness that left the’environment stunned: “I don&#8217t intend to fight on the radio with the other teams, man. The stewards will take care of it. To behave like that on the radio is childish, childish”.

“We both want to win, we are not here to finish second or third. But we cannot win every weekend. We are very critical, but that is how we are, and some people are different. I aim for perfection, although it is difficult to reach it all the time, but I want to work to get as close as possible. Sometimes there are moments of tension, but then it all works out perfectly”, Verstappen said of himself and Lambiase still in the’summer of 2024.