Speaking at a Viaplay event in the Netherlands on Thursday evening, four-time World Champion Max Verstappen opened up on the decision to GianPiero Lambiase to join the McLaren F1 squad in 2028.
Last week, Jos Verstappen had already explained how his son felt about the hugely respected F1 engineer deciding to take an enormous offer from the Woking-based team for his services. “GP” will take the role of Chief Racing Officer, reporting to Team Principal Andrea Stella.
The Max Verstappen and GianPiero Lambiase partnership will go down as one of the greatest F1 driver-race engineer combinations in the history of the sport. While there has been plenty of brutal honesty and some anger between the pair at the times, they have both got the best out of each other.
In their 10 years together so far, the Dutchman has won 71 races and four World Drivers’ Championships. He came up agonisingly short of a fifth crown in 2025 against GP’s future employer, McLaren.
Verstappen explained at the Viaplay event that they have achieved everything together and he gave Lambiase his approval to go and join McLaren.
“He told me what kind of offer he received. I said: you would be stupid not to do it. We have already achieved everything together.
“And then he gets such a great offer, also with his family in mind and the security it would give him.
“He asked me for a sort of permission and I said that he absolutely had to do it. He really wanted to hear that from me.”
A natural evolution in opinion from Max Verstappen on working with GianPiero Lambiase forever
Speaking back in 2021 to Ziggo Sport, Max Verstappen said he would quit the sport if GianPiero Lambiase stopped working with him.
However, following all their success together over the last few years, his opinion on staying in the sport without GP by his side has changed.
“I have told him that I will only work with him. If he stops, I will also stop. It is unbelievable how we work together.
“Sometimes he can be strict towards me, but that is what I want. He should be able to tell me when I behave like a jerk, and I will do that to him, too. That is what I have always told him, and he can tell me over the radio.
“Lately, it has been going very well, as sometimes I have been trying to be an engineer, and he tried to be a driver.”
