Verstappen Loses Lambiase for Austin as Ferrari Manages Hamilton's Singapore Fallout

Max Verstappen will have a different race engineer at the United States Grand Prix after Gianpiero Lambiase stepped aside from the role, little more than a day after the pair celebrated victory together on the Singapore podium. It closes, at least for now, the most recognisable driver-engineer partnership of the past decade. Ferrari, meanwhile, is managing the noise around Lewis Hamilton’s slide from third on the grid to sixth at the flag, and Liam Lawson’s future is once again an open question as Red Bull’s 2027 decisions approach.

Lambiase leaves Verstappen’s ear after more than a decade

Lambiase has been the voice on Verstappen’s radio since the Dutchman’s promotion to Red Bull in 2016. Through four world titles, their exchanges became a fixture of race broadcasts. They were blunt, occasionally prickly and built on obvious mutual trust. Sunday’s win from pole at Marina Bay was therefore a fitting scene on which to pause the partnership. Verstappen said afterwards that he had “almost jinxed himself” over his long-time ally, a remark that reads differently now.

The race engineer’s job is easy to underestimate from the outside. He filters a pit wall’s worth of strategy calls, tyre data and rival intelligence into short instructions a driver can act on at 300km/h. Under the 2026 regulations, with a far larger share of power coming from the electrical side of the power unit, that also means a steady stream of guidance on energy deployment and recovery. A new voice has to learn when Verstappen wants detail and when he wants silence. That is a significant adjustment to make with six rounds left.

The timing at least limits the damage. Verstappen is fourth in the championship on 221 points, 119 behind Andrea Kimi Antonelli, and with 150 grand prix points left to play for, his title hopes are mathematical rather than realistic. What remains at stake is the fight for second place, where he sits only 17 points behind George Russell. Austin on 25 October will be a useful test of how deep Red Bull’s operational bench runs. A smooth weekend would suggest the structure around Verstappen is robust. A scrappy one would raise fair questions about how much of Red Bull’s race-day sharpness rested on one relationship.

Third to sixth: Hamilton and Ferrari’s uneasy Monday

Hamilton started third in Singapore and finished sixth, while Charles Leclerc converted second on the grid into second at the flag. At a circuit where overtaking is notoriously difficult and track position is worth more than almost anywhere else, losing three places is costly. Positions at Marina Bay tend to change hands through strategy, pit work or a mistake rather than a straight pace deficit.

The reaction has been loud. RacingNews365’s survey of international coverage found the word “sabotage” in circulation, and GPfans has gone further, arguing that Hamilton has lost trust in the team and that the relationship will end badly. Set against that, Hamilton apologised to Ferrari after the race. That apology deserves more weight than it has received. A driver who believes his team has undermined him rarely starts the post-race conversation by saying sorry, and it suggests Hamilton accepts at least some responsibility for how the evening unfolded.

What the numbers say

The championship table tells a calmer story than the headlines:

• Hamilton is third in the drivers’ standings on 229 points, 14 ahead of Leclerc.
• He is only nine points behind Russell in the race for second.
• Ferrari is second in the constructors’ championship on 444 points, 105 clear of McLaren.

That is not the profile of a partnership in freefall. Narratives about broken trust tend to gather momentum faster than the evidence behind them, and a single bad Sunday rarely proves them. Ferrari’s interest is straightforward. It needs both cars scoring heavily to secure second in the constructors’ standings and to give Hamilton a genuine chance of finishing runner-up. The more useful sign in Austin will be whether the team and driver address Singapore openly and then move on. Prolonged silence would let the speculation fill the gap.

Leclerc’s Turn 1 and the chance he actually regrets

Leclerc made the better start and claimed the inside line for Turn 1, and the instinctive verdict in the media centre was that he should have held his ground and taken the lead. According to Autosport and Motorsport.com, Leclerc accepts that he missed an opportunity against Verstappen, but not the one most observers picked out.

His reading is the more sophisticated one. Marina Bay’s opening sequence is a series of quick changes of direction, so the inside line into Turn 1 becomes the outside for Turn 2. Holding the inside against a car with momentum around the outside can leave you badly placed for the next corner, or produce the kind of contact that ends both races on lap one. Verstappen is rarely the driver who yields in that situation. Backing out of a fight that the geometry does not favour is sound judgement rather than timidity.

The cost of second rather than first was seven points, and Leclerc is now fifth on 215, six behind Verstappen. He is out of the title picture, but very much part of the scramble behind it. A driver who reviews his race this candidly, and looks past the obvious talking point, is usually the one who finds the real gain next time.

Antonelli 102 clear, with five drivers covered by 37 points behind him

Antonelli’s third place in Singapore was the kind of result that wins championships. It was not spectacular, but it was 15 more points against a team-mate who started 19th. Russell recovered to ninth for two points, and the gap between the Mercedes drivers is now 102 points with six rounds remaining. Counting grand prix points alone, 150 are still available, so Russell is not mathematically finished. To close the gap, though, he would need a sustained run of results and some misfortune for Antonelli.

Antonelli has eight wins and, at 20, is on course to become the youngest world champion in the sport’s history, beating the record Sebastian Vettel set at 23 in 2010. Toto Wolff chose humour when asked about Antonelli’s repeated track limits breaches in Singapore, as Crash.net reported. With this lead, Mercedes can afford to laugh. In a tighter fight, those untidy moments are exactly what turn into time penalties at the worst possible moment, and Antonelli will want them out of his game before he arrives in Austin.

The runner-up fight

Behind the leader, the championship has become the most competitive part of the table:

Position	Driver	Team	Points	Gap to second
2	George Russell	Mercedes	238	–
3	Lewis Hamilton	Ferrari	229	9
4	Max Verstappen	Red Bull	221	17
5	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	215	23
6	Lando Norris	McLaren	201	37

Five drivers from four teams are covered by 37 points, which is less than two race wins. Russell has the fastest car beneath him, but a second difficult qualifying session would quickly bring Hamilton and Verstappen into range. In the constructors’ championship, Mercedes leads Ferrari by 134 points and is well placed to confirm the title.

Lawson’s “you tell me” and Red Bull’s crowded 2027 decisions

Asked about his future, Lawson offered PlanetF1 a pointed “You tell me…”, and the wider Singapore reaction also turned to whether he will be retained. His performance at Marina Bay made his case for him. He started eighth and finished seventh, adding six points to reach 75 and ninth in the championship.

The comparison with his RB team-mate is stark. Arvid Lindblad started ninth and finished 15th, lapped, and has 38 points, roughly half Lawson’s total. At the senior team, Isack Hadjar charged from 22nd to 10th for a point and sits eighth in the standings on 97. RB is fifth in the constructors’ championship on 100 points, comfortably clear of Alpine on 68, and Lawson has carried much of that load.

Lawson has been here before. He was promoted to Red Bull for 2025 and dropped after two rounds, then rebuilt his reputation in the junior team. Red Bull has always treated its seats as a pipeline, and there is logic in keeping places open for the next generation. On this season’s evidence, though, moving Lawson aside would be a decision about the programme’s structure rather than his performance. His “you tell me” carried a fair point: the results have already answered the question.

From Portimão to Cadillac’s zero: the rest of Singapore’s fallout

• Verstappen’s busman’s holiday. Rather than rest after Singapore, Verstappen is racing a Mercedes-AMG GT3 in the GT World Challenge round at Portimão this week. His appetite for racing outside F1 remains undiminished, and so does Red Bull’s tolerance of it.
• Alonso’s restart complaint. Fernando Alonso passed Hadjar and kept him behind for seven laps, then watched him sweep back past at a restart, describing the engine as “so ridiculous” to RaceFans. Aston Martin has seven points in the first season of its works Honda partnership, and frustration of that kind tends to surface at contract time.
• Third place in the constructors’ championship. McLaren has 339 points to Red Bull’s 332 after Verstappen’s win and Hadjar’s late point outscored Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri’s fourth and fifth. With Red Bull’s points so concentrated on one car, McLaren’s two-car consistency should still be the safer bet.
• Norris keeps his humour. After a low-key weekend, Norris spotted a “best driver” sign at the post-race party and asked “Where’s Lance?”, a light moment at the end of a difficult stretch for McLaren.
• Haas against Audi. Nico Hülkenberg’s eighth place brought Audi four points and cut the gap to seventh-placed Haas to seven, 23 points to 30. In the lower midfield, one good afternoon can swing that battle.
• Cadillac’s wait goes on. Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas finished 17th and 19th, and the newcomer remains on zero points. With six rounds left, a first score would be a modest goal that matters a great deal internally.

Austin is a circuit where overtaking is possible and strategies can vary, which makes it a fitting place for Verstappen to start without Lambiase. The new partnership’s first weekend will reveal more about Red Bull’s readiness for 2027 than anything said this week.