Matt Becker joined David Croft and Karun Chandhok in the recent episode of Sky Sports’ F1 podcast following the conclusion of the Belgian GP. There, they opened up on how Christian Horner called Gianpiero Lambiase the “Jason Statham” of Red Bull among other topics. Talking about Lambiase and Max Verstappen, Chandhok recalled Sebastian Vettel’s younger days at Red Bull when he too used to get “schooled” by his race engineer Guillaume Rocquelin.
Lambiase was recently in the headlines because of how he handled Verstappen throughout the Belgian GP race. The Dutchman’s engineer stood up to his rage on several occasions and even stopped him from making an unscheduled pit-stop towards the end of the race.
Apart from this, the British-Italian engineer also hit back at the two-time world champion during Friday’s qualification. After Verstappen complained about his race set-up, a furious Lambiase hit back at him, shocking many people. In the process, the also left the majority of the F1 community in awe, because of his sass.
These instances prove how the Austrian team likes to have figures in the team who can stand up to their star driver. As Chandhok recalls, this happened before too, when Rocquelin was Vettel’s race engineer. Now it is Lambiase, who deals with Verstappen on a near-weekly basis.
Max Verstappen and Lambiase’s relationship reminds Chandhok of Vettel’s Red Bull days
While the Sky Sports panel was talking about Verstappen and Lambiase, Chandhok got nostalgic about Vettel’s Red Bull days. They were times when the four-time world champion often resorted to having some very heated conversations with his French race engineer.
Talking about this, Chandhok said as per Sky Sports F1, “Back to the relationship between Sebastian Vettel and Guillaume Rocquelin. Rocky, as he was known also at Red Bull. It was similar Crofty wasn’t it? Where it was almost like this sort of big brother you know sitting on the pit wall. And then the little brother getting all hot-headed.”
“The adrenaline is pumping in the car. And just you know they bicker like siblings but actually they’re in it together. You know chasing that common goal of winning races and in World Championship,” the Indian former F1 driver added.
Interestingly, Lambiase who works with Verstappen now, was initially hired not to work for him. Instead, was hired to work with Vettel after ‘Rocky’ was given a different role at Red Bull.
Vettel interviewed Lambiase before Red Bull’s entry
Sebastian Vettel turned out to be the person to interview Gianpiero Lambiase before he was taken into Red Bull. Lambiase worked with Sergio Perez in Force India before, but was looking to join the team in 2015. For this, he sat in an interview that involved Vettel himself.
However, he could not work with the four-time world champion as the German moved to Ferrari soon after he joined. On the other hand, Daniel Ricciardo had a different race engineer.
In the end, he had to work with Daniil Kvyat initially before the Russian was replaced by Max Verstappen midway into the 2016 season. Since then, Gianpiero Lambiase has Max Verstappen mature from a rash rookie into a multiple-time world champion.
