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Meet Gianpiero Lambiase, Max Verstappen’s race engineer

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Gianpiero Lambiase has been alongside Max Verstappen throughout his entire Red Bull career.

After taking the victory at the Dutch Grand Prix, Max Verstappen had a lot to discuss with his, Gianpiero Lambiase, his race engineer.

Verstappen got back-to-back home wins with Dutch fans packing the grandstands and brought him closer to his second consecutive title. However, neither of those thoughts were at the forefront of his mind as radioed his team in celebration for his win.

Instead, his race engineer Lambiase received praise, albeit in a typical Verstappen way.

In reference to the new F1 Manager 2022, the Dutchman joked:

“And I think your rating went up GP by +2,”

“Hehe, I think you’re getting close to 90 now,”

The duo’s success is no joke, though. Lambiase has been with Verstappen through thick and thin in the Dutchman’s F1 career. This season, Lambiase stepped up to take over as the Red Bull team’s trackside engineer lead from a renowned engineer, Guillaume “Rocky” Rocquelin.

Gianpiero Lambiase’s early years and his F1 career

Lambiase was born in 1981 in London, contrary to what his Mediterranean name suggests. Along with Paul di Resta and Dario Franchitti, he is one of many successful British Italians in motorsport. He is also a Chelsea fan like his father.

He went to Cambridge to master his craft, similar to Red Bull’s strategy head Hannah Schmitz, but his craft had nothing to do with motorsport.

Surprisingly, he was a trained actor and apparently played drums for Torperstate, an indie band that came in second place at the 2003 MTV Unsigned Band Awards.

Eventually, he entered the F1 scene in 2005 with Jordan, and he hasn’t looked back since.

He remained with the Silverstone team when it changed hands from Midland to Spyker to Force India. In 2008 and 2009, he served as Giancarlo Fisichella’s performance engineer at Force India.

He was given a promotion in 2010 and was appointed as Vitantonio Liuzzi’s racing engineer; however, they were only together for a single season as Di Resta took over the position at the side.

Lambiase kept working on that side of the garage, first for three years with the Scot and then for one year with Sergio Perez before switching to Red Bull.

At Red Bull, Lambiase was given the role of race engineer for their new driver, Daniil Kvyat, but after only 23 races, Verstappen was promoted to Red Bull and he kickstarted a victorious partnership with Lambiase.

This alliance of Verstappen and Lambiase has yielded 20 wins, 60 podiums, 13 pole positions, and one world championship.

Now with Verstappen staying with Red Bull till the end of 2028, the only remaining question is how much more history the two of them can create together.

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