Austrian GP: Max Verstappen without engineer Gianpiero Lambiase

Max Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase will miss this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix due to personal reasons, with long-time Red Bull engineer Simon Rennie stepping into the role in Lambiase’s absence.

Red Bull confirmed the news to ESPN ahead of the first practice session of the race weekend in Austria on Friday.

Lambiase — known by many as ‘GP’ — has been a key figure in Verstappen’s success over recent years and is the engineer fans hear communicating with the four-time world champion during races.

He is due to return to his role on the Red Bull pit wall at next weekend’s British Grand Prix.

Rennie, who previously engineered Alex Albon, Daniel Ricciardo and Mark Webber at Red Bull, now has a factory-based role as group leader of simulation engineering.

Prior to joining Red Bull, he worked with Kimi Raikkonen at Lotus and started his trackside career working as a data engineer on Fernando Alonso‘s Renault in the mid-2000s.

Verstappen, who has won five times at the Red Bull Ring, is currently 43 points adrift of championship leader Oscar Piastri with 14 races left to run this season.

Source: espn.com