Racing Bulls boss issues response to Max Verstappen test rumours

Racing Bulls team principal Alan Permane has definitively shut down any suggestion that Max Verstappen could get behind the wheel of the junior team’s machinery in a bid to find greater performance.

This comes shortly after Permane stated that a “top-line” Formula 1 driver — such as, perhaps, Verstappen — could get behind the wheel of the easier-to-drive VCARB machine and extract the machine’s maximum performance.

No Racing Bulls test for Max Verstappen in the near future

While Red Bull Racing has struggled to find its footing with its RB21 machine thus far in the F1 2025 season, its sister team Racing Bulls has thrived.

The VCARB 02 has enabled its drivers — Liam Lawson and Isack Hadjar — to bring home critical points for the team. Lawson, who struggled to find his footing in the RB21, has managed to snag 20 points, with teammate Hadjar scoring 22.

Meanwhile, Yuki Tsunoda, who replaced Lawson at Red Bull from the Japanese Grand Prix, has only managed a meager 10 points. Only seven of those have been scored in the RB21.

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Alan Permane — the new Racing Bulls team principal, succeeding Laurent Mekies after the former boss was promoted to Red Bull — told Motorsport.com that the outfit had early indications that the car would be promising.

“It’s something we have worked on over the winter, and then we realised that we had a nice car to drive,” Permane said.

“But until you start competing, it’s difficult to judge it. Through that Bahrain test we were never quite sure.

“After that we were pretty confident, because we ran with quite a lot of fuel that week.

“When we got to the first races, we realised what we’d done, and that helped lead the rest of the development for this car.”

While Permane denied claims that Racing Bulls intentionally designs its cars to be somehow easy to drive, he did acknowledge that the ability for young drivers to get behind the wheel and be successful is a bonus.

“I suspect it’s a car that a top-line driver would also find comfortable to drive and would also be able to extract the performance from,” he said.

But is a top-line driver set to get behind the wheel?

Rumours have suggested that reigning World Champion Max Verstappen could get take the VCARB 02 out on a track, either for a filming day or for an FP1 session during a race weekend.

The thought process here is that Verstappen could theoretically identify areas of improvement in the Racing Bulls machine, while also perhaps bringing some helpful feedback to Red Bull in order to make the RB21 simpler to drive.

This weekend at Zandvoort, though, that suggestion was put to Permane by Sky Sports F1, and he denied it outright.

Asked if there were any discussions about Verstappen getting behind the wheel of a VCARB 02, Permane replied, “Absolutely none at all. Zero.

“I’m sure they’re focused on their own thing, getting the most out of the package that they have, and we’re doing the same here.”

Though Red Bull and Racing Bulls are sister teams, they’re both required by FIA regulations to construct their cars independently of one another, which means that there is theoretically very little crossover between any machines the two outfits construct.

It follows that it would therefore be difficult for Verstappen to get behind the wheel of the VCARB 02 with the intention of discovering some of the car’s hidden weaknesses, or with the intention of solving Red Bull’s problems.

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