Red Bull announces major restructure after key departure

Max Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase is to be promoted to a more senior role as part of a wider Red Bull restructure in the wake of Jonathan Wheatley’s departure.

Wheatley will be leaving his role as sporting director of the Milton Keynes-based team after the 2024 season, with the long-serving Briton taking up the role of team principal at Stake, which will morph into Audi for 2026. 

Needing to replace Wheatley, Red Bull has opted to split his duties, with Verstappen’s long-time engineer Lambiase set for a second promotion after already serving as head of race engineering along with his normal duties with the three-time world champion.

Lambiase is set to become head of racing, with this new role taking overall responsibility for the race, heritage and car build teams, and head up Red Bull’s thinking for the strategy group and on the sporting regulations. He will continue to engineer Verstappen. 

He will report into technical director Pierre Wache, with current senior strategy engineer Steve Knowles becoming acting head of sporting – focusing on regulatory matters, and who in turn, is one figure who will be reporting into Lambiase.  

Further restructure at Red Bulls

Additionally, Rich Wolverson sees his role expanded to head of race team operations from the current senior engineer – car engineering and becomes responsible for the day-to-day operations of the race and heritage teams.

Like Knowles, he will report into Lambiase, as will new head of race team support and logistics Gerrard O’Riley – the current head of freight operations.

Chief mechanic Phil Turner has also been promoted to race team factory operations manager, reporting to Wolverson.