Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen has been linked with a new long-term Red Bull contract, a few weeks after declaring he wanted to stay with the team for the rest of his career.
Verstappen has a very strong connection with Red Bull, never clearer than his emotional declaration moments after winning in Abu Dhabi and clinching the title: “They know I love them and I hope we can do this for 10 or 15 years together.
“There’s no reason to change ever. I want to stay with them for the rest of my life. I hope they let me.”
It’s a big claim, one clearly driven by emotion and – if you consider the vast history of driver and team relationships – very unlikely to be fulfilled.
Verstappen’s current contract, signed in early 2020, runs to the end of 2023. His new one will likely add at least a couple of years to that. If Verstappen and Red Bull ever are to split, it probably won’t be at the team’s request.
Technical chief Adrian Newey said after the 2021 season finale: “He’s just so easy to work with, there’s no pretence, he just comes in and gets on with it. I love the guy. He’s amazing.”
Newey has a biased position but he is a very shrewd judge of drivers who has worked with some of the world’s very best over many decades. So he would not say this lightly: he believes Verstappen is “the real deal” and “right up there” with the very best drivers in F1 history.
“He’s aggressive, generally very fair, has such talent, such drive, still so young and on a steep learning curve,” Newey says.
Red Bull’s in awe of – critics say in thrall to – Verstappen, who has repaid the team’s faith and focus with interest. The result is already a partnership on the brink of being one of F1’s all-time greats.
Unless the team has royally misjudged the new 2022 technical rules, Verstappen and Red Bull should sail into the top 10 all-time winning combinations next year.
It should be noted that Verstappen still lags behind Sebastian Vettel in the most important Red Bull driver metrics: championships, wins, and podiums. So there’s some way to go before he even carves himself out as the iconic Red Bull driver.
But the Verstappen-Red Bull combination is rapidly becoming one of F1’s most recognisable ever, with 118 starts and counting.
That’s more than Vettel had, it’s just come in a less competitive era for the team. So, for now, the success pales in comparison.
But the gap could close rapidly and while Vettel’s place in Red Bull history is assured, he is very much the team’s past while Verstappen represents its present and future.
Verstappen is on the coattails of the very best. So how far can he go and, perhaps just as intriguingly, how far can he go with Red Bull?
When asked by The Race about the prospect of Verstappen as a Red Bull ‘lifer’, team boss Christian Horner says: “He’s grown up with us. He joined us as a 16-year-old and we’ve seen him mature into the young man that he is.
“He’s come of age, we’ve seen him grow. We’ve seen him make his mistakes, but we’ve seen him mature into the world champion that he is today.”
That doesn’t really answer the question. To be fair, it’s an impossible one to conclusively resolve.
Vettel represents a clear example of how even a Red Bull golden boy can suddenly head for the exit door. But it took a certain set of circumstances. It’s hard to see Verstappen being usurped by a team-mate in the way Vettel was by Daniel Ricciardo in 2014 and Verstappen doesn’t seem to have the kind of ethereal ‘pull factor’ that Vettel had with his burning desire to race for and win with Ferrari.
Another contributing factor for Vettel’s exit was Red Bull’s slide and Renault’s struggles. The team stopped being competitive and that hastened Vettel’s desire for a new challenge.
Perhaps Verstappen’s 2021 title rival Lewis Hamilton offers a cleaner comparison. Especially as there is a small parallel with their careers – not in terms of age, as Verstappen started so young, but with other more relevant points of comparison.
Verstappen doesn’t have quite the junior career backstory as Hamilton did with McLaren but he committed to Red Bull in 2014, made his F1 debut with its junior team the following year, and was thrust into the senior team in only his second season.
He has broken all manner of records with the organisation – youngest debutant, youngest winner, youngest podium finisher – and is one of the youngest world champions too. There is a strong bond.
An age-based comparison is unfair given Verstappen’s early start but we can compare them after seven seasons, where they are remarkably similar: both one-time world champions, with Verstappen a winner of 20 grands prix and Hamilton a winner of 22.
So, like McLaren was for Hamilton, Red Bull was Verstappen’s way of stepping on the path to greatness. Whereas Hamilton’s ascent within McLaren was the long game, Verstappen was forceful with Red Bull from the start. He opted for the Red Bull programme because the Toro Rosso seat was on the table for 2015, while other driver academies (including Mercedes’) were chasing him but couldn’t offer the same guarantee or even a clear timeline.
That was Red Bull’s genius big move, realising Verstappen was such a serious talent it was worth effectively bending the conventional rules to get hold of him.
But there’s still plenty for Verstappen to achieve in F1. The question is what Verstappen needs to do in order to achieve it, as Hamilton did when he recognised he needed to leave McLaren.
Verstappen’s desire to stay at Red Bull forever is laudable and almost certainly genuine. Why wouldn’t it be? Especially amid the euphoria of the first title win.
Hamilton probably thought the same about McLaren. Things change. Sentimentality is a nice idea but it has a finite value. Elite sportspeople, quite rightly, have to put themselves and their careers first.
Verstappen says anything he does now will be a “bonus” as he’s achieved his career goal, but he will want more. If Red Bull cannot offer that or he loses faith in its ability to do that, he will inevitably look for greener pastures.
His journey with Red Bull started because of his immense talent and ambition. The same factors will determine how long that journey continues.
All that’s close to being guaranteed is that the Verstappen/Red Bull alliance will almost certainly go down in history as a great one. That in itself is already a tremendous achievement.
How far will they go as a pairing, and what will Verstappen achieve as an individual, are two questions that could come to define the coming years in F1, especially once Hamilton’s incredible career comes to an end.
