Red Bull finds GianPiero Lambiase successor ahead of McLaren move

Red Bull is poised to bring Tom McCullough back to the Formula 1 frontline as the Aston Martin engineer has emerged as the leading candidate to succeed GianPiero Lambiase.

As revealed by PlanetF1.com last week, McCullough is set to leave Aston Martin at the end of 2026, with the veteran engineer now expected to join Red Bull in a senior trackside role vacated by Lambiase.

Tom McCullough set to join Red Bull

With Lambiase eventually moving on, the signing would see McCullough return to a prominent F1 role after being moved away from Aston Martin’s trackside operations at the start of 2025.

It would also represent the next piece of Red Bull’s reshaping of its senior leadership structure under team principal Laurent Mekies, following the recent signing of former Mercedes driver development lead Gwen Lagrue as director of the Red Bull junior driver programme.

Lambiase’s own pending departure has been known since April this year, when McLaren confirmed that the Red Bull head of race engineering would join the Woking-based team “no later” than 2028.

Best known for his long-standing partnership with Max Verstappen, Lambiase has become one of the most recognisable figures on Red Bull’s pit wall.

The engineer has risen through the ranks at Milton Keynes while simultaneously serving as Verstappen’s race engineer, but is now expected to bring this particular chapter to an end when he leaves Red Bull. The exact date of his departure from his current operational duties remains undefined, with top-level sources suggesting it may be later in 2027 before any changes to the current status quo are made.

As first reported by Germany’s Bild, corroborated by PlanetF1.com, McCullough, meanwhile, is expected to step into the senior role Lambiase will vacate, although he is not expected to also serve as Verstappen’s race engineer.

While team sources have remained coy about McCullough’s exact defined role, he has been indicated as the next well-respected industry figure to be snapped up by Mekies, following the signing of Lagrue.

Who will replace Lambiase as Max Verstappen’s race engineer?

According to Dutch publication De Telegraaf, that responsibility will instead be set to fall to Tom Hart.

Hart had previously been expected to leave Red Bull for Williams, where he was lined up to become Alex Albon’s new race engineer.

However, an agreement between Mekies and Williams team principal James Vowles has reportedly paved the way for Hart to remain at Red Bull.

The engineer has already been building his experience as a race engineer during recent tests with Red Bull reserve driver Yuki Tsunoda and could deputise for Lambiase at several races this year.

That would allow Hart to work alongside Verstappen before taking over permanently in 2027, providing Red Bull with a smoother transition.

Hart is no stranger to the role, having previously deputised for Lambiase during practice at the 2024 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola.

What’s next for GianPiero Lambiase?

Lambiase will take up the position of chief racing officer at McLaren, reporting directly to team principal Andrea Stella.

But his long-term future at Woking could involve an even bigger role, although this is far from official at this point in time.

Mekies has previously suggested that Lambiase is heading to McLaren with the prospect of eventually becoming team principal, succeeding Andrea Stella when the Italian’s tenure eventually comes to a conclusion, suggesting Lambiase’s purported promotion is not expected to be immediate.

Asked at the Canadian Grand Prix to clarify previous comments about Lambiase’s future, Mekies said:

“Look, it’s certainly my understanding that GP [GianPiero] is going to McLaren to become a team principal. That’s what I told you at the time.

“Obviously, we had a number of conversations before he was going to make the decision.

“Now, don’t ask me if it’s going to happen. The timing of it is none of my business. I can just tell you the content of our conversations.”

Lambiase’s departure could also have some implications for Verstappen.

The four-time world champion is understood to have held advanced discussions with McLaren about a potential move, meaning the loss of his long-time race engineer to the team could become another factor in his thinking about the future.

Verstappen once appeared adamant that his own career was inseparable from Lambiase.

Following his first world title, he said: “I have said to him, I only work with him. As soon as he stops, I stop too.”

His position has clearly evolved since then, however. While the bond between the pair remains extremely strong, Verstappen has made clear that Lambiase must ultimately make his own career decisions.

“GP and I, we have a very honest and open relationship. That was all good,” Verstappen told PlanetF1.com and other media earlier this year.

“And I said already back then, I wish him anyway all the best. And you know, for me, there were no hard feelings on that.

“And as a team, of course, we look to the future. You always, I think, want to innovate and improve, and that’s what we are doing right now.”

Tom McCullough’s F1 comeback after Aston Martin re-assignment

For McCullough, a move to Red Bull would represent a return to the coalface of F1 after two years away from the Aston Martin trackside operation.

He joined the Silverstone-based squad in 2013, under its Force India iteration, and went on to become a key member of Aston Martin’s senior F1 leadership team.

McCullough served as performance director from 2018 through to the end of 2024, before Andy Cowell’s restructuring of Aston Martin saw him move across to Aston Martin Performance Technologies [AMPT].

The restructuring introduced a “flatter structure” of leadership, with Mike Krack taking on many of McCullough’s previous trackside responsibilities.

But, with 24 years of trackside performance leadership and extensive experience running technical organisations and engineering teams, the Aston Martin veteran remained an obvious target for rival teams.

Before joining Force India/Aston Martin 13 years ago, McCullough spent a year at Sauber as head of trackside engineering.

Prior to that, he spent a decade at Williams between 2002 and 2012, working as a performance and race engineer.

With Lambiase heading for McLaren, the arrivals of McCullough and Lagrue, as well as the promotion of Tom Hart, Laurent Mekies’ reshaping of the Milton Keynes squad now seems to be underway in earnest, following his sudden promotion to the role in place of the axed Christian Horner in mid-2025.

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