Advisor Helmut Marko issued the strongest confirmation yet, leaving Red Bull’s top brass with a clear task going into next season.
After rumors linking him to Mercedes, Max Verstappen will stay at least another year with Red Bull. / Gabriele Lanzo/Alessio Morgese/NurPhoto/Getty Images
The first domino of the Formula One 2026 drivers’ market has fallen—and it’s a big one.
After months of speculation, four-time reigning world champion Max Verstappen will remain with Red Bull next season, team advisor Helmut Marko said Monday in an interview with German publication Sport.De. Despite reported interest from Mercedes, Verstappen will stay with the team where he’s spent nearly the entirety of his F1 career for the start of the new regulations period.
Red Bull can finally breathe a sigh of relief. For now.
Marko’s statement confirms what became widely understood over the course of the last week at the Belgian Grand Prix. Reports emerged throughout the season of an exit clause in Verstappen’s contract with Red Bull, which runs through 2028. ESPN reported that such a clause would be triggered should the 27-year-old fall to fourth or lower in the standings by next weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
Following the results of the sprint race and Grand Prix at Spa, Verstappen remains in third place, 28 points clear of Mercedes driver George Russell in fourth. The Hungarian Grand Prix takes place next Sunday ahead of F1’s summer break and Russell is only able to claim a maximum of 25 points, leaving Verstappen safe from falling any further in the standings.
The irony is that Russell was perhaps the driver who stood to be impacted the most by a hypothetical Verstappen move. The 27-year-old’s own negotiations with Mercedes and team boss Toto Wolff have largely been in a holding pattern amid uncertainty surrounding Verstappen’s future. Wolff made clear that while he was still prioritizing getting a contract done with Russell that the prospect of landing a multi-time world champion was intriguing. Following Monday’s news that Verstappen will remain at Red Bull, Sky Sports reported that Russell and Mercedes are nearing an extension that will keep the four-time Grand Prix winner with the Silver Arrows through at least 2027.
But Verstappen, who in recent weeks largely sidestepped or completely avoided questions regarding his prospects beyond 2025, struck a somewhat different chord going into the Belgian Grand Prix, the team’s first race weekend following the firing of renowned team principal Christian Horner.
“In general I’m pretty happy where I’m at,” he said before winning the sprint race and finishing fourth in the Grand Prix in Spa. “And I hope, and that is still the target that we set out when we signed the new deal, that I will drive here until the end of my career.”
Now the pressure is on the team’s new brass to make a compelling case for Verstappen to want to stay beyond next season. Red Bull elevated Laurent Mekies, formerly team principal at sister team Racing Bulls, to fill Horner’s position. But Mekies himself acknowledged that there’s no better pitch to keep Verstappen than giving him the best piece of machinery to operate.
“I’m sure Max wants a fast car, and if we get him a fast car, I’m sure it’s canceling out all the other considerations,” Mekies said. “So really the focus is very much to try to get to know the team as quickly as possible, in order to see how we can support, how we can build the next step of competitiveness, in order to get a fast car, and hence to make it an easy call for Max.”
F1 begins a new set of regulations next season, which all teams must adhere to, but Red Bull is also taking on the added responsibility of developing its own engine for its two cars. After extending its partnership with Honda to fill the gap from 2022 to ‘25, Red Bull will debut its own power trains next season in partnership with Ford. Such a technical development is not only a massive undertaking, but also critically important as a new pecking order takes shape in 2026 during the first year of the new FIA regulations.
While much remains unknown about which teams will rise to the front of the grid at the start of next season, Verstappen’s talent is not in doubt. He’s the only driver outside of McLaren’s duo of Lando Norrs and Oscar Piastri to win multiple races in 2025, having captured victories in the Japanese and Emilia-Romagna Grands Prix as well as the Belgian sprint. He’s managed to stay competitive even while his three teammates over the last 12 months—Sergio Pérez, Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda—have floundered while operating the second Red Bull.
But a talented driver alone isn’t enough to win championships in F1, a fact that’s been clearly on display through the first half of the 2025 season as Verstappen struggles to consistently keep up with the McLarens. And four consecutive titles isn’t enough to satisfy Verstappen, who very well could end his career as one of the greatest drivers of all time—and may already be in that conversation.
The next calendar year will be critical for Red Bull to put its best foot forward. Time will tell if it’s enough to placate Verstappen or if the team will risk seeing its most successful driver in another car in the future.
