Max Verstappen has ended speculation about his future in Formula One by signing a new contract with his Red Bull team that will extend to the end of 2030, after almost 18 months of uncertainty around the Dutchman.
After being linked with moves to Mercedes and McLaren, Verstappen’s commitment to Red Bull ensures that all the major seats in the leading F1 teams are now locked in for next year, just as the sport’s silly season in terms of transfer speculation is beginning.
The four-time champion’s future had been a subject of intense debate and not just in reference to switching teams. He had also seriously intimated that he might call time on his F1 career because he was so unhappy with how the new regulations have affected his enjoyment of racing.
When discussing the new contract going into his home race this weekend at the Dutch Grand Prix, the 28-year-old said he believed the chances of him leaving F1 had been greater than that of him leaving Red Bull. “I never felt that desire or need also to change [to another team] to try and win somewhere else,” he said in Zandvoort. “If I feel well within the team here, why should I? Because I know that they do everything for me, and they know that I do everything for them once I’m on the track and trying to get the results.”
Looking relaxed and in good humour as he faced the media alongside the team principal, Laurent Mekies, Verstappen expressed his confidence that his team would deliver despite their travails with the new regulations this season. “I think I was closer to retiring than changing team,” he said with a laugh.
Verstappen’s previous contract was set to run until the end of 2028 but was understood to include performance-based break clauses, which would have allowed him to leave had he chosen to do so, and while Red Bull have struggled with the 2026 rule set, Mercedes have emerged with a dominant car. Verstappen is sixth in the world championship, 110 points behind the title leader, Mercedes’s Kimi Antonelli.
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The Mercedes team principal, Toto Wolff, had made no secret of his desire to work with Verstappen but with Antonelli having stepped up with extraordinary assurance in only his second season and with his teammate George Russell confirmed, Mercedes were out of the equation. Ferrari similarly locked in Charles Leclerc, while Lewis Hamilton, who has a multi-year deal with the Scuderia and is newly invigorated and successful this season, ensured they too had a set lineup.
McLaren then became a potential destination, perhaps as much a negotiating tool for Verstappen’s management with Red Bull as anything else, with a purported switch between McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and Verstappen being floated and the McLaren CEO, Zak Brown, admitting any team would be remiss were they not to consider the possibility of signing Verstappen. However, these rumours were ultimately given short shrift by Brown, who insisted they were happy with their lineup of Lando Norris, the world champion, alongside Piastri.
The Dutchman has long said he would like to see out his career with Red Bull, whom he joined as part of their driver programme in 2014, before joining their sister team, Toro Rosso, in 2015 and being promoted to Red Bull early in the 2016 season.
While his options for a new team were limited, his dislike for the new regulations and the emphasis they place on energy management was painfully clear, but with F1 and the FIA adapting them already for next year and beyond, and the prospect of the FIA returning to V8 engines with minimal electrical input in 2030, he has been swayed, not least in his faith in his team to turn things round and return further titles.
“First of all, you need to feel good where you’re at. Let’s say, this year, if you are in the fastest car, but you don’t feel well [happy], I don’t think that’s going to last very long,” he said. “So, I feel very good in this team. I have the belief in the people that we can get back to the top. That’s what we are targeting. I still want to win races. I’m hungry to win more.”
For Mekies, who took over from Christian Horner in July last year, Verstappen is absolutely key in steadying the ship, not least in the driver’s ability to bring the team on as well as wrestling the absolute maximum from the car, as the team principal acknowledged.
“What a demonstration of trust Max has put in the team by making this decision,” he said. “We don’t take it lightly; with that trust comes a huge amount of responsibility in living up to being able to give him the best package for the years to come.
“The role that Max has in the team, he’s a lot more than the fastest driver in the world for us, he’s the central point of the team.”
