“He Was Trying to Be the Driver”: Max Verstappen Reveals Unusual Relation with His Race Engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase

Thanks to the decision made by F1 to broadcast all radio messages between the teams and the drivers we are seeing a side of the sport which was hidden for so long. This side not only gives us rare insights into the dynamics but also the kind of relationship the drivers have with their race engineers. This is exactly where Max Verstappen and Gianpiero Lambiase (GP) come in. The two most talked about diver race engineer duo on the grid gave us some more insight into their relationship.

The Red Bull men have surely taken the price for the most hilariously chaotic duo on the grid. However, ever so rarely we come across a civil exchange between the two which gives us an insight into why they work so well together, despite all the crass back and forth.

Max Verstappen gives us insight into his relationship with GP after the Mexican GP conversation

The crassness is down to Verstappen’s Dutchness but that never comes in the way of Verstappen and GP working together. They showcased that during the Mexican GP race where Verstappen was running comfortably in the lead. However, GP wanted Verstappen to eliminate any chance of an error during the race which even the journalists were curious about and asked Verstappen in the post-race interview.

A journalist from Motorsport.com asked, “Max, in the first half of the race we heard some radio comments about Turn 3 and you said ‘yeah, I tried but the car’s not very lovely around there’. Could you explain the background to that a little bit? Was there a little issue or not?”

Verstappen replied, “No, it was just a kerb. I tried to also clip the kerb like people around me were doing but I was like a pogo stick sometimes. I tried, just trying different lines. GP’s my race engineer, but I think at one point he was trying to be the driver. We have those discussion sometimes, sometimes I’m the race engineer and then he’s the driver. We just swap roles.”

We rarely talk about the civil conversations between the two, however, this is a dynamic between the two that we were not aware of. There is obviously some banter still involved. In fact, this banter can be worth a million dollars if Red Bull’s marketing department takes Verstappen’s advice.

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Max Verstappen reveals a million-dollar idea surrounding him and Gianpiero Lambiase

We are all aware of the reasons why Verstappen was called Mad Max up until a few years ago. The fiery and aggressive approach is rarely seen on track at the moment but that guy still shows up for the radio conversations.

We often see the byproduct of that with hilarious and fiery exchanges between Verstappen and GP during races, especially when the Dutchman isn’t pleased with something. However, now that these exchanges are a matter of public knowledge, Verstappen made a suggestion that can easily be a million-dollar idea if Red Bull‘s marketing team implements it right.

He came up with an excellent idea. He said, “I think I definitely need to try and speak to marketing. They have to put a compilation together at the end of the year with all our radio messages throughout the year.”

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Now wouldn’t that be a fun recap? It would soon turn into a game of guessing which ones will make it and which ones won’t! Regardless, it is an interesting idea from the Dutchman and we hope we see something like this after the end of the current season.