Red Bull have hired former Aston Martin performance director Tom McCullough as their head of racing, with the 50-year-old Briton due to start at Milton Keynes at the beginning of the 2027 season.
McCullough replaces Gianpiero Lambiase, Max Verstappen’s race engineer of seven years, who is leaving to become McLaren’s chief racing officer under team principal Andrea Stella in 2028. Lambiase has held the head of racing title alongside his race engineering duties; McCullough inherits the senior half of that job, running all aspects of the race team and reporting to team principal Laurent Mekies.
“We’re delighted to welcome Tom to the team at the beginning of 2027 and look forward to the wealth of experience and expertise he will bring to the role,” Red Bull said in confirming the appointment.
A hire made against a backdrop of departures
The recruitment matters less for what Red Bull gain than for what they have lost. Since Adrian Newey’s exit, the team have shed a generation of senior technical and operational staff: sporting director Jonathan Wheatley, chief engineering officer Rob Marshall, head of race strategy Will Courtenay, and Christian Horner, whose 20-year tenure as team principal ended in July 2025. Chief engineer Paul Monaghan, another survivor of the championship years, is expected to join Cadillac.
Lambiase’s move to McLaren was the most conspicuous loss of all, because of his standing with Verstappen. The pair’s blunt, sometimes abrasive radio exchanges became one of the defining double acts of Red Bull’s four-title run from 2021 to 2024, and Lambiase’s calls under pressure — Abu Dhabi 2021 among them — were central to it.
McCullough is the first significant senior appointment of the Mekies era that pulls in the opposite direction. He is not a like-for-like Lambiase replacement: Red Bull have yet to name who will sit on Verstappen’s radio, with Tom Hart, Verstappen’s former performance engineer, having turned down an approach from Williams.
Why McCullough, and why now
McCullough is one of the more experienced trackside engineers in the paddock, with a career that started at Reynard and took in spells at Sauber and Williams before more than a decade at the Silverstone team through its Force India, Racing Point and Aston Martin identities. He spent four seasons as chief race engineer there before moving up to performance director, a post he held through 2024.
His value is in the specific thing Red Bull have lost: institutional knowledge of how to run a race weekend. He worked at Force India during the years when the team consistently punched above a mid-tier budget, and stayed through Lawrence Stroll’s takeover and the investment that followed. In January 2025 an internal restructure moved him off the F1 race team and into Aston Martin Performance Technologies, with Mike Krack absorbing his performance director duties — a reshuffle that made him available.
The 2027 start date is the practical detail. Red Bull are not getting help this season or next, and the gap between Lambiase’s departure and McCullough’s arrival will have to be bridged internally.
What it means for Verstappen and 2027
The appointment lands in the worst season of Verstappen’s career since his 2015 debut year. He sits seventh in the drivers’ championship on 91 points with three podiums and no wins, having failed to finish in China, Monaco and Britain. Red Bull are fourth in the constructors’ standings, 205 points adrift of Mercedes.
The causes are structural rather than personnel-based. Red Bull became their own power unit manufacturer for 2026 in partnership with Ford, and the decision to keep developing the 2025 car deep into last season drained resources from the new project. Mekies has framed the campaign as a rebuild and conceded the team “never managed to give Max and Isack a car they could push with”, a reference to Verstappen and team-mate Isack Hadjar.
That context makes McCullough’s arrival date the real subtext. Verstappen’s contract situation has dominated the paddock all year — Mekies acknowledged in July that “many good drivers” have called Red Bull about a seat — and a hire that only takes effect in 2027 is a signal about when the team believe they will be competitive again.
- Verstappen: 7th, 91 points, three podiums, three retirements in 2026
- Red Bull: 4th in the constructors’, 205 points behind Mercedes
- McCullough starts January 2027; Lambiase joins McLaren in 2028
Red Bull have spent two years watching senior people leave. Signing one back is a start, but the car, not the org chart, remains the problem.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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