No smoke without ire: Why Verstappen isn’t just flirting with Mercedes

Some occurrences in the world of Formula 1 you can predict with the accuracy of a caesium oscillator: dour joy-sponge Lance Stroll tiptoeing humourlessly across the finishing line at least half a minute after his team-mate; Christian Horner flip-flopping between stating the bleedin’ obvious and denying the bleedin’ obvious; and the unseemly rush to hit ‘record’ whenever Bernie Ecclestone opens his mouth.

All these F1 tropes and more came to pass during the Austrian Grand Prix weekend with the reassuring predictability of an episode of Murder, She Wrote. Nuclear winter may be but weeks away but, given the choice between queuing for a hazmat suit or elbowing other journalists in the face to get your voice recorder as close as possible to catch The Bolt’s increasingly sotto voce mumblings – the members of the fourth estate know where their priorities lie.

In recent grand prix weekends scarcely a day has passed without some speculative noise regarding Max Verstappen’s future spurting into the ether. During the Austrian weekend the sturm und drang intensified – the trajectory is clearly towards crescendo at some point or other.

Ecclestone’s guest appearance was supposedly in lieu of FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem to present those medals which nobody really cares about. Besides denying the japesters of social media the possibility of another clip of the president being blanked by Lewis Hamilton, Bernie’s appearance meant yet another opinion about Max’s future entered the spectrum.

As it happened, it wasn’t a very interesting one. Bernie mused that Max should stay at Red Bull because “he should be where he’s happy” – which, if nothing else, reveals how little attention The Bolt pays to matters arising in F1 nowadays. Apologies for the inadvertent spoiler if the next thing you were going to click on was headlined “Bernie Ecclestone’s surprise take on Verstappen rumours” or some such.

That Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff has been flirting with Verstappen – albeit not in the conventional sense of the word – for at least 18 months is no secret. As prolonged courtships go, it’s been singularly unhurried; even Jane Austen would have sensed her readers’ patience reaching a point of exhaustion and sent her protagonists up the aisle by now.

Verstappen's Red Bull future is up in the air, with a Mercedes move being constantly rumoured

Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images

Perhaps this is why George Russell – out of contract at the end of the season – turned the wick up this weekend, saying openly that Verstappen was in talks with Mercedes. This in turn forced Wolff to spend virtually the entirety of his own pre-race press conference torturously not-quite-denying this was the case.

Conversation over the wiener schnitzel afterwards must have been strained at best.

Though Russell claims he’s in no hurry to sign a new contract for 2026 and beyond, it’s clear that Mercedes’ dalliance with Verstappen has put Russell’s negotiations in a holding pattern. And few things can be as vexatious and disobliging to an F1 driver as being conspicuously kept waiting while their employer looks for someone better.

There are very pressing reasons for Verstappen wanting out. The real question is when, and whether it would be Mercedes. Indubitably, any other team on the grid would happily pay off one of their drivers, even the lead one, if Max were to become available and it could afford his salary expectations

Technically Verstappen is under contract to Red Bull until 2028, but all contracts have performance clauses which enshrine expectations on both sides. Such documents are by nature confidential, yet it’s understood Verstappen would have been free to walk if he was below fourth place in the drivers’ championship after the Austrian GP.

Owing to various tawdry schisms, Red Bull is no longer Verstappen’s ‘happy place’. If it could field a consistently quick car and run it properly then Max, a ferocious competitor, would set his reservations aside to enjoy that edge. But the fact is that McLaren has the better car over the majority of circuits, while the RB21 is frustratingly track-specific.

Red Bull has already publicly capitulated in the constructors’ championship battle – not a difficult admission since it only has one driver capable of driving its car quickly. That number may reduce to zero in the near future.

Doubts over Verstappen's future have been sparked by Red Bull's decline as the squad, which won the title in 2022 and 2023, is fourth in the 2025 constructors' standings

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images

Last week, Verstappen’s former team-mate Sergio Perez appeared on a Mexican podcast in which he made a number of damaging revelations. Perez, you’ll recall, not only won five grands prix for Red Bull, he won two years’ salary when the team decided it had to buy him out of his contract. None of his replacements have moved the dial.

Among Perez’s claims was that Red Bull’s on-track performance went south as soon as chief technical officer Adrian Newey resigned and was consigned to a hands-off role. You can look at the timeline and say this is stating the bleedin’ obvious but Horner has repeatedly disagreed.

Verstappen has been careful to distance himself from the petty politics within the Red Bull organisation, but even he has been clear that the car is the problem rather than the second driver. But in public at least, management hasn't responded to this mood music. Given contractual ‘gardening leave’ terms for technical personnel, caps on wind tunnel and CFD research, and the long lead times involved in creating new components, it’s easier and cheaper to blame the driver rather than acknowledge and address systemic failing in the organisation.

Plus there’s 2026 around the corner, rumours about whose engine project is more advanced than whose, and the aforementioned Newey already sketching a new car for someone else.

So there are very pressing reasons for Verstappen wanting out. The real question is when, and whether it would be Mercedes.

Indubitably, any other team on the grid would happily pay off one of their drivers, even the lead one, if Max were to become available and it could afford his salary expectations. You might wonder why Mercedes would choose him over Russell, for instance, given that George is currently driving at the top of his game and Verstappen would not be a massive performance upgrade – but such is Max’s allure.

Russell could consider himself unlucky if he were to make way for Verstappen, as the Briton is currently on top of his game

Photo by: Peter Fox / Getty Images

Russell said it himself last Thursday: "Toto has made it clear to me that how I'm performing is as good as anybody. There is only one driver that you can debate in terms of performance.

"And these are his words and not my words, and that is why I have no concern about my future. But there are two seats to every team and I guess he needs to think who are those two drivers going to be for those two seats – and I guess that's what the delay is."

That ‘one driver’ whose relative performance to Russell is up for ‘debate’ is clearly Verstappen. Every racing driver considers themselves the best but even they will – however grudgingly – find a way of acknowledging Max’s excellence.

Max – or his inner circle – may take the view that he will incur no reputational damage from this season, or the next if the 2026 Red Bull underperforms. He could just as easily take stock a year from now and trigger his exit clause then

The question is how Verstappen will fit into a new team and how the timings might align. How would a Verstappen-Russell partnership work at Mercedes, given they are not on cordial terms? Wolff, who had to manage the tempestuous relationship between Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, would doubtless prefer Verstappen-Antonelli – even though that would come with the attendant risk of damaging the young Italian’s career.

Perhaps more pressingly, Verstappen must avoid repeating the follies of Fernando Alonso, a man who has swapped fields many times only to find the grass substantially less verdant than he expected. Max – or his inner circle – may take the view that he will incur no reputational damage from this season, or the next if the 2026 Red Bull underperforms. He could just as easily take stock a year from now and trigger his exit clause then.

Would he have the patience to wait for 2027 before his next realistic title bid? That’s another question to answer before Toto Wolff can say, “Reader, I signed him.”

How long will it be until Verstappen can fight for the F1 title again...and who will it be with?

Photo by: Jure Makovec / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images