Max Verstappen triggered the laughter with a friendly quip aimed at his long-serving race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase.

And that is because Lambiase – affectionally known as ‘GP’ – Verstappen revealed, “got a dog and he named it Max”.

GP now has ‘one Max that listens’ to him

Lambiase has served as Verstappen’s race engineer ever since his winning Red Bull debut at the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix, with their team radio interactions providing plenty of entertainment for F1 fans over the years, some bickering and sarcasm never far away.

But, Verstappen – an avid virtual racer alongside his real-life F1 heroics – quipped in a recent stream that Lambiase has a furry friend, his namesake, who will do as he is told.

After it was put to him that the four-legged Max is “probably more obedient” than Red Bull’s four-time World Champion, Verstappen smiled and replied: “I told him at least you’ve got one Max that listens to you!”

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Red Bull team radio can sometimes becomes a heated channel when Verstappen and Lambiase get revved up, which has led team principal Christian Horner in the past to make a light-hearted comparison about the pair.

“The relationship they have is almost like an old married couple debating about which television channel they should be watching,” he joked.

However, GP recently explained that while he does not shy away from giving it back to Verstappen over the radio, he knows the line and when he should be “subservient”, harking back to the 2024 Sao Paulo Grand Prix as a recent example.

There, Verstappen produced a stunning wet-weather drive to go from P17 on the grid to victory and effectively secure his fourth successive World Championship.

“It’s something you need to be innately aware of when you are communicating with a driver that’s travelling at 300kph+ in a very high-pressure environment like that,” Lambiase said at the Autosport Awards.

“Whilst we are a duo, I think you need to realise that the engineer needs to be subservient to the driver at that point.

“It’s pointless rising to the occasion or anything like that because you’ll just end up in a spiral downwards very, very quickly.”

Lambiase signed a new long-term deal with Red Bull last year, one which saw him promoted to head of race engineering, alongside continuing to serve as Verstappen’s race engineer.

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