April 17 (Reuters) - Max Verstappen encouraged his Red Bull race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase to move to McLaren after the Briton received an offer that was hard to refuse.
Lambiase will switch teams when his contract expires at the end of 2027 and join McLaren as their chief racing officer in a move announced last week.
"He told me what kind of offer he received," four-times world champion Verstappen said at a recent Viaplay event in Amsterdam in his first public comments on the announcement. "I said: 'You would be stupid not to do that'.
"We have already achieved everything together. And then he gets such a great offer, also with his family in mind and the security it would give him.
"He asked me for a sort of permission and I said that he absolutely had to do it. He really wanted to hear that from me."
Lambiase will be the latest in a string of senior employees to have left once-dominant Red Bull, with former principal Christian Horner sacked last year.
Verstappen's own future at the team remains uncertain, with the Dutch driver contracted to 2028 but unhappy with rule changes in a new engine era.
Red Bull announced on Thursday changes to their technical leadership team, with Ben Waterhouse taking on an expanded role as chief performance and design engineer with immediate effect.
From July 1, Andrea Landi will join from sister team Racing Bulls, where he was deputy technical director, as head of performance.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin; Editing by Ken Ferris)
