Max Verstappen's Bold Stance on Red Bull and Formula 1's Future

Max Verstappen sits down, spots the fan, and moves it an inch or two.

“It’s too hot in here,” he says.

It’s Monza, the eve of the Italian Grand Prix. The heat is suffocating, Red Bull’s hospitality is wilting, and Verstappen – already known as one of Formula 1’s straightest talkers – is in no mood to soften an opinion. Not about his season. Not about Red Bull. And certainly not about what F1 has done to its engines.

He has just signed a two-year contract extension that, on paper, ties him to Red Bull until the end of 2030. In reality, the deal looks more like a high‑stakes truce. The performance clauses remain. The exit routes stay open. He earns more, but if Red Bull do not give him a car worthy of his talent, the door to “pastures new” is not bolted shut.

For now, though, he is staying. And he is demanding.

“We are not in a title fight”

Ask Verstappen where his head is at this season and there is no sugar-coating.

“Of course it’s not where I want to be,” he says. “As a team we’re trying to just learn and understand a lot of things for next year. We are not in a title fight. We are just trying to find more performance.

“Changes need to happen to the car for next year. We will not be able to change that for this year, but we just need to try and get a lot of learnings to do better next year.”

The problem, as he sees it, is not a quirk or a setup niggle. It’s baked into the car.

“Overall we’re just lacking a bit of performance. The car is not where I want it to be feeling-wise, and the through-corner balance is too hit and miss between entry, mid and exit.

“It’s just fundamentally something in the car that we need to try and work on for the next year.”

This is not a one-off. The same complaints have bubbled under the surface across different regulation cycles. That worries him – and the team.

“That’s exactly that,” he says. “There’s also things that we talk about within the team, like how can that happen, how can we fix it? That’s basically what we are doing now and trying to do now.

“Some people have left, new people have come in. With the new people, we are discussing what we can do about it. Is that just some changes, a different philosophy? All these kind of things.”

The dominant years are gone. For now. Verstappen’s response is not to run, but to double down.

Why he stayed

So why commit to Red Bull again, with no guarantee of a title-winning car?

“It comes down to also feeling well within a team. This is like a second family to me,” he says.

“The belief that you can turn things around, you can build towards hopefully a better future with other people, new people. And at the end of the day, it’s not only Formula 1 for me. There are a lot of things that I’m doing next year that Red Bull is involved in as well.

“I feel good here. So this, for me, is the right place to be.”

He insists the team did not have to launch a charm offensive.

“I always said to them: ‘Don’t stress about it, just work on the car.’ Because the faster the car goes, the easier the decision is anyway.

“I can understand, of course, maybe sometimes they were a little bit worried. But at the same time, for me, I was just worried about here, what was going on.

“At the same time, I was very busy with my stuff also outside of Formula 1. So I never really spent a lot of time talking or doing different things or trying to go somewhere else.”

That last line matters. Because he did talk.

Mercedes last year. McLaren this year. Not gossip, but real conversations.

“Of course, any kind of chat you take seriously. They’re all very respectful chats. There’s nothing wrong with that.

“I felt that staying was, for me, the right choice. You have to follow your heart. I could have run away very early on in my Red Bull career and gone somewhere else to try and win. If you have a little bit of patience, you do end up winning. I feel like that’s my approach now as well.”

He bristles at the idea of chasing the quickest car just to prove a point.

“I don’t mind the challenge also. I don’t have that desire or need to show in another car that I can win it, or whatever.

“It’s easy to run to the fastest car and then do it all again. But it’s not how I am. You cannot be the captain of the ship and as soon as there is something not working, you jump off the ship.

“It’s been a bit downwards from the dominant years, but I don’t mind also rebuilding it. It’s another challenge as well.”

Pure racing at the Nordschleife

If Formula 1 this year has been a grind, the Nurburgring 24 Hours was his release.

“Probably the Nordschleife,” he says, when asked for his favourite race of the season. “It was super-cool to be able to do an endurance event with my team-mates, the guys that won with the car throughout the main season.

“We knew that we were going to be really strong. We peaked at the right time, but unfortunately the car retired. It was an incredible experience. And pure. Pure motorsport.”

His first stint – from 10th on the grid to the lead – lit up the event.

“I was enjoying it. Not easy conditions. It started to drizzle. The track was slippery. Crashes. Code 60s.

“Some people were like: ‘Let’s see how he will do in the race under pressure with all these kinds of scenarios that he has never done before.’

“But I have done them a million times on the simulator. I have done so many laps and 24-hour races on the simulator. I never felt out of depth or whatever. I was fully zoned in. I just had a great time.

“Once I was in the race, you switch to another level. I was just in a zone. It’s really enjoyable.”

He wants to go back and win it. And not just that.

“All the endurance races,” he says of his bucket list. “Eventually, of course also Hypercar. I don’t want to rush it. I want to do it in the right environment. On my terms. And competitive.”

The idea of Le Mans with Fernando Alonso? Very real.

“We’ve talked about it. I mean, look at Fernando. He’s 45 and he’s still flying. Especially for Le Mans, with his experience, it could be a good option. It needs to fit our schedules. It needs to make sense. It needs to be on my terms. And there needs to be a real chance to go there and win it.”

A champion at war with the rules

If endurance racing gives Verstappen that sense of purity, modern F1’s power units do the opposite.

At Suzuka, he asked out loud: “Is it worth it?” So what changed?

“Hoping that it will be better in the future. Accepting where we are at the moment. Still the love for the sport. Not at the moment the driving. But the love for the sport.

“I love competition, naturally. I just hope that in the coming years, towards 2030, it can only get better. And to start to make the best of it, because these are the rules for the next four or five years.”

He wants people to understand why drivers are so frustrated with the current hybrid era – and the way the battery deployment dictates how they drive.

“In the history of the sport, normally the driver that is the most committed, the latest on the brakes, earlier on throttle, committing in the high speed, they get rewarded, because you just gain that time in the corner.

“But now you’re constantly thinking about, ‘In this corner I might have to hold in a bit. Go later on throttle. Or brake earlier. Or lift off. And then I have more top speed.’ Stuff like that. It’s so unnatural. It’s so not how it should be.”

Then comes the line that will sting engineers across the grid.

“No disrespect. And I hope no-one picks up on this. But look at Yuki. He jumps in the Racing Bulls car at the Dutch Grand Prix. Never driven the car before. Immediately competitive.

“Liam Lawson jumps from the Racing Bulls to the Red Bull – immediately competitive. It’s because these cars are numb to your driver inputs.

“Of course, yes, you still have to do a good lap. And you still have to commit. The fastest drivers will always come out on top. But it’s really, really limited, like a choke hold or something. You’re held back.”

F1 has already agreed to shift the internal combustion–electrical split to 60-40 by 2028. Verstappen wants more. Or rather, less.

“It has to go back to a V8, just for drivability already. When you drive the old cars, you cannot imagine the difference in how the engine responds, or the drivability you get. And how terrible or horrible it actually is now compared to just having a V8.”

Compared even with the previous turbo-hybrid units?

“Also horrible, the feeling compared to a V8. The V8 is so much better. It is so much more free, lighter. Cars are so heavy nowadays.

“It is better to just have a smaller V8 engine, much lighter. Try to really limit the battery size to maybe like a kind of push-to-pass battery. But you should not have it involved or any kind of proper normal performance running.”

And the turbo?

“Ideally not, because that introduces turbo lag.”

He is not nostalgic for nostalgia’s sake. He is nostalgic for the emotion.

“I have been lucky that the years before have been quite decent [in terms of results]. Not how I wanted it to be with the battery side of things.

“But just the emotion of the V8, of the V10, back in the day, when I was a kid. You walk around, you hear these cars go out, you have goosebumps.

“Even if you go 300km/h compared to now sometimes 350, 360, it doesn’t matter.

“It is the emotion of the noise that you get from these cars, of the vibration. It is just another level. And I really hope that that thing will come back.”

The “winning machine” who refuses to play politics

Verstappen knows the image. The relentless, emotionless winner. The machine.

“I am a winning machine when I need to be,” he says. “But I can also switch off, and enjoy my life outside of racing.

“But anything racing-related, of course I am a winning machine. I demand a lot from the people in the team. They also expect me to perform and do the best job I can.

“That is what you get paid for at the end of the day. We have the same target. The same goal.”

He does not apologise for being outspoken. He sees it as essential.

“Of course I can be very outspoken. But that is what I like. That is also with our culture.

“And that is how I approach my life also outside of F1, with my GT3 team. We do not hold back. At least for me, you need to be like that to really get the best out of everyone.”

Why is that honesty non-negotiable?

“I just want to be myself. I know there are a lot of politics in Formula 1, and I understand also between the teams there are a lot of politics.

“You will always speak for yourself in terms of where you think you might have an advantage or not as a team. That is normal. Also with the engines and the chassis, it is the same thing.

“When it is good, it is good. When it is bad, it is bad. You will hear it from me because that is how I like to operate. And I am not holding back from that.”

So he stays at Red Bull, in a car he does not love, in an era whose engines he openly dislikes, driven by a faith that the sport – and his team – can find their way back to something purer.

If Formula 1 does not follow him there, he has already made one thing clear: he will find that feeling somewhere else.