The move that never happened
Red Bull have yet to win a Grand Prix under Formula 1’s new regulations. Max Verstappen has four podiums to show for the season and sits 140 points behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli with ten race weekends left. Those were the numbers on the table while McLaren were talking to him.
Speaking to BBC Sport, the Dutchman confirmed what the paddock had been trading in since the spring. Multiple sources told PlanetF1.com that his negotiations with McLaren had reached an advanced stage this season, a year after Mercedes had circled him in 2025.
“Of course, any kind of chat you take seriously,” he said. “They’re all very respectful chats. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
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Why he stayed
Verstappen gave nothing away at the British Grand Prix, when the speculation was at its loudest. “I’m not going to get involved in that,” he said then. “I’ve already said what I wanted to say. If something new happens or if something changes, you’ll hear it from me and not through the grapevine or from someone else writing about it, right?”
The answer landed on the eve of the Dutch Grand Prix. Red Bull announced he would stay into the 2030 season, a commitment that will carry him past fifteen years in the team’s colours since his promotion from Toro Rosso in May 2016.
“I felt that staying was, for me, the right choice. You have to follow your heart,” he said. “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.”
A second family, and a life outside the cockpit
At 28, with a car that is not close to the front, Verstappen framed the decision around belonging rather than lap time. “It comes down to also feeling well within a team. This is like a second family to me,” he said. “The belief that you can turn things around, you can build towards hopefully a better future with other people, new people.”
He also pointed to commitments away from Formula 1 that keep Red Bull in his diary next year, and to the message he kept sending the factory while the rumours ran. “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.”
Verstappen conceded the team had reason to worry. He says he simply did not spend much of his own time on it. “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.”
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