Max Verstappen’s decision on his future in Formula 1 will not be affected by the impending departure of his close ally at Red Bull Gianpiero Lambiase, says team principal Laurent Mekies.

Lambiase, Verstappen’s race engineer since the Dutchman joined the team in May 2016, is leaving to become McLaren’s chief racing officer by 2028 at the latest.

Mekies said Lambiase’s departure was “absolutely not” a factor into Verstappen’s thinking about whether to stay in F1 amid his dissatisfaction with the behaviour of the new engines introduced this year.

Mekies said: “Obviously, we speak with Max every day. And Max knows motorsport upside down.

“He’s living and breathing this team. He knows most of these guys. He understands very well the dynamics that can happen.

“The team has been extremely successful and you can’t promote everyone. And some people make some decisions.”

Verstappen has made it clear that he is unhappy about the way the new hybrid engines, and their near 50-50 split between internal combustion and electrical power, have affected the driving experience.

Mekies said that the rule changes introduced for this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix would go some of the way to addressing the drivers’ key concerns.

These were to return qualifying to being more flat-out driving rather than featuring unnatural energy management techniques, and to reduce the danger of excessive closing speeds when one car is deploying electrical energy and one is harvesting it.

Mekies said: “It’s going in the right directions. We don’t think it’s changing any pecking order. Nobody pretends it’s going to fix everything, but it’s a good step, and we will certainly support more steps in the future so that the drivers can be flat-out out there.”

Mekies said he agreed with the assessment of McLaren team principal Andrea Stella that “hardware changes” were needed to properly address the problems that had emerged with the new engines.

Stella was referring to an adjustment of the power ratio so that more was provided by the internal combustion engine.

Sources have said that talks are already ongoing between F1 bosses on this matter. The main option on the table would be to increase the fuel-flow rate of the internal combustion engine so that the ratio was more like 60:40 next year.

Stella said: “There should be a consideration for some hardware changes, more for the longer term, such that we can place the operating point of the power unit somewhere where less compromises are required from a chassis point of view or from a driving point of view.

“We think this is possible, and we think that all stakeholders should approach this conversation with the willingness to contribute.”

This option, if carefully configured, could also allow the sport to keep the operation of the boost and overtaking modes made possible by the electrical elements much as they are now.

Red Bull – and McLaren – upgrades for Miami

Red Bull have had a difficult start to the season and Verstappen, who missed out on last year’s title to McLaren’s Lando Norris by two points, is ninth in the championship after three races with a best result of sixth.

Red Bull are introducing a major upgrade to their car for Miami, when the season restarts after a break enforced by the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix.

This was tested by Verstappen at Silverstone last Wednesday and Mekies said it would address “a fair chunk” of their shortcomings

“One thing is sure, we haven’t solved everything,” Mekies said. “But there is no doubt that progress has been made into giving something more consistent to our drivers.

“How does that make you fit in the classifications? It’s impossible to know. But in terms of us alone on the track, in terms of giving a more consistent product to our drivers, I’m confident we have made some progress. Do we know if we cracked everything? No, we know we didn’t crack everything yet.”

Stella – whose world champions have had a more successful start to the season, including a second-place finish for Oscar Piastri at the last race in Japan – said: “There was always the idea to deliver sort of a completely new car, especially from an aerodynamic upgrades point of view for the North American races.

“I would like to stress that this is what I would expect of most of our competitors so not necessarily is going to be a shift in the pecking order.

“It will be effectively just a check who has been able to add more performance within the same timeframe, and we also have some performance to recover if we look at Mercedes and to some extent Ferrari as well.”

Mekies said he believed about 0.3secs of the Red Bull’s one-second-a-lap deficit to front-runners Mercedes was accounted for by the new in-house Red Bull engine.

“Unfortunately, the first few races confirmed that we have a lot of work to do,” he said. “It’s 360. But certainly on the PU side as well, we can see that competition has a clear advantage. So we see them clearly ahead of us.

“It doesn’t remove anything to the amazing job that the guys have done. But it’s just confirmed that we have been evaluating ever since we put the car on the ground in Barcelona and in Bahrain. So fantastic starting point, unbelievable starting point. But it’s a competitive business.

“We are quite a few 10ths of a (second per) lap behind them in terms of performance. Even more so in terms of chassis performance, to be clear. And so we know we have a lot of work to do ahead of us.”