McLaren announced earlier this year that it had secured the services of Gianpiero Lambiase — Max Verstappen’s long-time race engineer — with a deadline of “no later than 2028.” Team boss Zak Brown now sounds rather more impatient: “I’m optimistic that we’ll see him in papaya at some point next year.”

The trouble is, Red Bull appears to be reading a different contract. Team boss Laurent Mekies disputes McLaren’s version entirely, convinced Lambiase is actually being hired for the team principal role — not the “chief racing officer” title McLaren claims, under which he’d report to Andrea Stella.

The Lambiase-Verstappen partnership is one of the sport’s most successful, a decade strong and backed by four championship titles. While the two teams argue over exactly who’s hiring whom for what, Verstappen himself is, for now, just watching his own garage’s future get negotiated without him.

Source: RacingNews365 (https://racingnews365.com/mclaren-set-latest-timeline-for-gianpiero-lambiase-arrival-from-red-bull)