Verstappen, McLaren sirens
Until three years ago, Red Bull was a perfect machine, and not just on the track. Behind the car that dominated that World Championship with 21 GPs won out of 22, there was a solid and close-knit structure, with a top-level technical department and an extraordinary icing on the cake named Max Verstappen. With the death of founder Dietrich Mateschitz in October 2022, however, the team’s glue was lost, and it slowly fell apart until the departure of Gianpiero Lambiase, the Dutch star’s race engineer who will move to McLaren in 2028.
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With Lambiase set to wear the papaya colors, Verstappen becomes the last great bastion of that team that interrupted Mercedes’ dominance to start its own second winning cycle for the Milton Keynes brand. Indeed, Verstappen: what will Super Max do without “GP”? One might think that the race engineer accepted McLaren’s advances because the four-time world champion could retire at the end of the year. But another hypothesis is emerging, namely that of a Verstappen who would join Lambiase at McLaren. Reporting this is the Telegraaf, always very well-informed about the Red Bull driver: according to the Dutch, contacts between CEO Zak Brown and manager Raymond Vermeulen date back to early 2025; and if Verstappen were to become free, Brown would certainly try to bring him to Woking despite Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri having long-term contracts (expiring in 2028 and 2029 respectively).
According to the Daily Mail, however, Verstappen’s current intention is to remain loyal to Red Bull primarily out of gratitude toward the structure that trained him and launched him into F1. Super Max, who according to the British had no objections to Lambiase’s departure and indeed reportedly supported his decision, would be willing to wait and see how the season ends. He certainly asks more of his team, which has started the new technical cycle very poorly, and of technical director Pierre Waché (already under fire); above all, he asks more of F1, guilty of having approved a regulation that goes against the sport’s DNA.
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Certainly, Verstappen has a very wide range of options. If he decided to stay in Formula 1 (not a foregone conclusion) and Red Bull did not improve the car, he would have Mercedes, McLaren, and Ferrari as possible destinations, i.e., the cars currently faster than the RB22. Everyone, naturally, is interested in Super Max, and they would have to question drivers of the caliber of Russell, Norris, Antonelli, and Piastri. The one that would have the fewest problems from this point of view would be Ferrari, given that Lewis Hamilton could retire at the end of the season.
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