Zak Brown responds after Red Bull’s GianPiero Lambiase team principal claim

Zak Brown joked Laurent Mekies may know something he doesn’t after the Red Bull boss claimed GianPiero Lambiase is destined to be a “team principal” at McLaren.

Red Bull announced last month that Max Verstappen’s long-time race engineer ‘GP’ would leave the team in 2028 to join rivals McLaren.

Zak Brown dismisses GianPiero Lambiase team principal speculation

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A Red Bull statement read: “Oracle Red Bull Racing confirms that GianPiero Lambiase will leave the team in 2028, when his current contract expires.”

McLaren confirmed his signing, and his position within the team.

“McLaren Racing is pleased to announce that GianPiero Lambiase will join the McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team as Chief Racing Officer, reporting into Team Principal, Andrea Stella,” said the Woking team.

“The role of the Chief Racing Officer already exists within the team’s structure with overall leadership of the race team. These duties are currently managed by Andrea Stella in addition to his role as Team Principal.”

That, though, did little to silence the rumours that Lambiase could replace Stella as team boss of the reigning world champions.

More on GianPiero Lambiase’s move to McLaren

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Those rumours intensified when Red Bull’s Mekies told the world that Lambiase would take up a team principal role.

“GP had an extraordinary opportunity,” said the Frenchman. “You know he’s going to be a team principal there. It’s not something that I can do anything else than wishing him well.”

A clip of Mekies’ comment was played to McLaren CEO Brown by Sky Sports.

“He knows something I don’t, apparently,” he quipped.

“I’ve got a great one. I got the best one in pit lane – Andrea Stella. I couldn’t be happier with Andrea.”

Rather than replace Stella, Brown says ‘GP’ will strengthen the McLaren team.

“My job as CEO is to get the best talent to think long term, to have the most strength on pit wall or at the factory and design, wherever the case may be,” he said.

“And so Andrea has done a fantastic job, our technical team and GP is a huge, huge talent. So when the opportunity presented itself to strengthen our racing team that’s exactly what we’re going to do, whether it’s a racing driver or an engineer, a strategist, whatever the case.

“So very happy he’s going to be joining us.”

It’s not the first time Brown has denied that Lambiase will be replace Stella.

Speaking to PlanetF1.com and other media outlets during the spring break, the American spoke of his happiness at having Lambiase join the squad but made it clear he would not be team principal.

“It’ll be on the racing operations side,” he explained.

“Andrea in reality kind of has three jobs. I think we sometimes talk about he has two, he actually has three. He’s the team principal. He runs the racing team and he also plays a big role in kind of a technical director capacity, obviously. Peter Prodromou is the other technical director.

“Andrea is kind of the glue that brings that together. I think much as the team principal role has evolved over the years and now you’re seeing most teams with a CEO and team principal. These teams are so big that if you’re going to be great in all those roles, I think Andrea is very capable of doing two jobs, but asking him to do three jobs is a tall order.”

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