Two more years than anyone expected
Max Verstappen is staying put. The four-time world champion put his name to a contract extension with Red Bull Racing this morning that runs through 2030, closing a file that had been open for well over a year.
His previous deal ran to the end of 2028. It carried performance-based exit clauses, and those clauses did the talking every time Red Bull had a bad weekend. Mercedes, Aston Martin, half the paddock at one point or another. The rumours never died because the escape route never closed. Now it has.
What makes the signature strange is when it arrived. Verstappen has no wins in 2026. Eleven rounds in, he has two second places and sits sixth in the drivers’ standings, 110 points adrift of Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli. Red Bull are fourth among the constructors. A driver with that record could have taken his CV anywhere he liked.
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Loyalty to a team that stopped winning
“I am really pleased with the contract extension,” Verstappen said. “We have the best people and I’m excited to keep working together with everyone to get back to the top again.”
He joined the Red Bull junior programme in 2014 and stepped into the senior team in 2015. Everything since has come in the same colours: 71 wins, 131 podiums, 48 poles across 244 starts, four straight titles from 2021 to 2024. He has never driven for anyone else at the top level.
Team principal Laurent Mekies sounded like a man who had been holding his breath for months. “Since the very beginning, Max has embodied everything that makes Oracle Red Bull Racing special: uncompromising competitiveness, relentless determination and the courage to challenge convention,” he said. “But we are not done yet. There are more races to win, more milestones to achieve and more history to write.”
Zandvoort lands at the right moment
The Dutch Grand Prix runs this weekend. Verstappen has won at Zandvoort three times, in 2021, 2022 and 2023, and he arrives with a fresh signature, an orange grandstand and a car that has spent the year stuck in the midfield.
Red Bull have their cornerstone locked in for five more seasons. Building him a car worth the paperwork is the harder half of the job.
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