The duel reignites
The clear performance improvement shown in Miami by Red Bull and especially McLaren seems to have also reignited the jabs between the two reference teams of recent seasons and protagonists of the most recent market battles. The spark was lit by Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies, who, speaking about the future transfer of Giampiero Lambiase – current Red Bull race engineer – to McLaren, said: “Lambiase had an extraordinary opportunity. There (at McLaren) he will become team principal“.
Quite significant words from a media perspective, since at McLaren Lambiase’s role has been defined as Chief Racing Officer and the Woking team has repeatedly stated that the Italo-English engineer would become a sort of right-hand man to Andrea Stella, who would retain his role as team principal.
Brown locks down Stella
Also via Sky Sports F1 came the response from Zak Brown to Mekies, played mainly on the level of irony: “Apparently, he knows something I don’t!“, joked the Californian manager, before getting serious and confirming that the papaya team principal will still be Andrea Stella for a long time: “I have a fantastic person, I have the best in the pit lane, Andrea Stella, so I couldn’t be more satisfied with Andrea“, Brown clarified, to avoid misunderstandings.
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“My job as CEO is to secure the best talents, to think long term, to have the strongest force in the pit wall and in the factory. So Andrea has done a fantastic job, as has our technical team. Lambiase is a great talent and so, when the opportunity arose to strengthen our race team, that is exactly what I did and will continue to do, whether it’s an engineer, a driver, or a strategist, whatever the case may be”. Issue clarified, at least until the next skirmish.
