Gianpiero Lambiase joining from Force India to engineer Vettel
Wednesday 27 August 2014 14:25, UK
Sebastian Vettel’s long-time race engineer Guillaume Rocquelin – who is better known in F1 circles under his nickname ‘Rocky’ – will take on a new role at Red Bull from 2015 as Head of Race Engineering.
One of the sport’s most well-known driver and engineer relationships has yielded four successive Drivers’ World Championships since Vettel joined the team in 2009.
From next season, however, Rocquelin is being promoted to a more senior role where he will oversee all of the team’s race engineers on both sides of the garage.
Red Bull have hired Gianpiero Lambiase, who currently engineers Sergio Perez at Force India, to step into Rocquelin’s shoes alongside Vettel.
Next year will represent the first season of a new technical era at Red Bull following Adrian Newey’s decision to take a step back from full-time F1 involvement at the team, the legendary designer to focus on what remain unspecified "new Red Bull Technology projects".
Vettel will hope for a much-improved 2015 with his chances of a record-equalling fifth straight world title all-but over this year. The German, who has been outperformed by new team-mate Daniel Ricciardo for much of 2014, suffered more reliability woe last weekend at Spa when a problem in Practice Two forced Red Bull to revert to an old engine for the rest of the weekend.
With the World Champion already close to his limit of five penalty-free engines this season, the German has admitted grid penalties are "inevitable" over the remainder of the season. However, Germany's Auto Motor und Sport reported on Wednesday that the problematic Spa power unit was not terminally damaged and can be pressed into service again.
