Max Verstappen’s Formula One race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, has been promoted as part of a restructure within Red Bull Racing following the departure of sporting director Jonathan Wheatley.
Wheatley will leave Red Bull in 2025 to become the team principal of Audi’s new F1 team, which will evolve out of the current Sauber squad, after spending 18 years at Milton Keynes.
The decision by Wheatley promoted Red Bull to make some changes within its team that were communicated internally on Wednesday ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix.
Lambiase, who has been Verstappen’s race engineer since the Dutchman’s victorious Red Bull debut in 2016, will now take on the role of head of racing.
In the position, Lambiase will continue to oversee the race engineering operations within Red Bull, but will now take over responsibility for the race, heritage and car build teams, reporting to technical director Pierre Wache.
Lambiase will also remain Verstappen’s race engineer despite his change in role, continuing a partnership that has yielded three world championships and is one of the most successful on the F1 grid.
Steve Knowles, the current senior strategy engineer, will become the acting head of sporting for Red Bull and report into Lambiase. His focus will be on regulatory and sporting matters, making him the team’s primary link with the FIA.
Senior engineer Richard Wolverson has been promoted to head of race team operations, where he will oversee the team’s daily activities. Gerrard O’Reilly, head of race team support and logistics, and Phil Turner, race team factory operations manager, have also taken on new roles.
In the wake of Wheatley’s departure being announced at the start of F1’s summer break, Red Bull moved to lean on its existing strengths within the team and promote from within instead of looking for any outside hires.
The same principle was taken following the decision by Red Bull’s chief technical officer, Adrian Newey, to leave after 19 years that was announced back in May, putting faith in the technical group working on the car design.
This included Wache, head of performance engineering Ben Waterhouse, head of aerodynamics Enrico Balbo and chief designer Craig Skinner.
Earlier this month, Newey was named as a shareholder and new managing technical partner for Aston Martin, starting next March.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said last week in Baku that the scale of the announcement by Aston Martin came “slightly prematurely” given Newey remains under contract at Red Bull.
Newey will not travel to any more F1 races through the remainder of his time at Red Bull, with his focus being placed on the Red Bull RB17 hypercar project.
(Top photo: Mark Thompson/Getty Images)
