Lambiase McLaren team principal, Brown responds to Mekies: “He knows things I don’t know”

The clear growth in performance shown in Miami by Red Bull and above all by McLaren seems to have also reignited the banter between the two reference teams of recent seasons and protagonists of the most recent market challenges. The fuse was lit by Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies, who, speaking of the future transfer of Giampiero Lambiase – current Red Bull race engineer – to McLaren, said: “Lambiase has had an extraordinary opportunity. There (in McLaren) he will become team principal”. Rather relevant words from a media point of view, given that in McLaren Lambiase’s role was defined as that of Chief Racing Officer and the Woking team repeated several times that the Italian-English engineer would become a sort of right-hand man to Andrea Stella, who would maintain his role as team principal. Again via Sky Sports F1, Zak Brown’s response to Mekies arrived, played above all on the level of irony: “Apparently, he knows something that I don’t know!”, joked the Californian manager, before turning serious again and confirming that the papaya team principal will be Andrea Stella for a long time to come: “I have a fantastic person, I have the best in the pit lane, Andrea Stella, so I couldn’t be more satisfied with Andrea”, clarified Brown, to avoid any misunderstanding. “My job as CEO is to make sure we have the best talent, to think long-term, to have maximum strength on 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’s exactly what I did and what we will continue to do, whether it’s an engineer, a driver or a strategist, whatever the case may be.” Question clarified, at least until the next skirmish.

Automobile Magazine – F1 English News
2026-05-02 16:54:00