Red Bull team principal Christian Horner recently joked that engineer and Verstappen were like a married couple and had been sent for marriage counseling

During Friday’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix practice session, Max Verstappen was missing his race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase.

During FP1, the pair sat together as rookies Jake Dennis and Isack Hadjar drove the two Red Bull cars as part of Formula 1’s young driver rules.

However, when Verstappen returned to the car for FP2, there was no sign of Lambiase, affectionately known as GP.

Instead, Verstappen’s performance engineer, Tom Hart, had taken Lambiase’s seat on the pit wall and was guiding him through a disjointed session.

Verstappen will be relieved to learn that Lambiase is expected to return for qualifying and the race at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, implying that we will likely hear a fair amount of arguing between the pair.

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner joked recently that Lambiase and Verstappen were like a married couple and had been sent for marriage counseling during the summer break earlier this year.

Indeed, Verstappen has been known to have some choice words for his engineer during races, but he has a very good off-track relationship with GP.