Why Japanese GP could mean even more for Max Verstappen and Red Bull

While the appeal of always having the fastest car is no doubt tempting, might Max Verstappen’s bond with Red Bull become even stronger this season?

Constant speculation and rumours have surrounded Max Verstappen and his potential future over the last 12 months, with constant suggestions that the Dutch driver could leave for pastures new before the end of his current contract.

Max Verstappen: We never give up

That the Red Bull RB21 is not the fastest car on the grid right now is indisputable – McLaren’s MCL39 appears to have a few tenths of a second in hand over everyone else.

But, at Suzuka at least, its advantage wasn’t so great to be insurmountable, and it was Max Verstappen who came through to defeat the McLaren duo in qualifying, before withstanding 53 laps of constant pressure from both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri breathing down his neck throughout to take the chequered flag and his first win of the season.

“Wow, thank you guys, what an unbelievable weekend,” was Verstappen’s radio message back to the team.

“What a great turnaround after the difficult start. You see, we never give up. We keep pushing together. Well done, everyone.”

The jubilation throughout Saturday and Sunday was evident. While he’d never say it, the possibility of going through this season without a win must have played across his mind at some point over testing and the first two races, such was the advantage of McLaren and the proximity of Mercedes and Ferrari.

The RB21 is not a poor car. In fact, it seems to have ticked quite a few of Verstappen’s boxes over the winter, and he’s gone as far as to say he’s feeling “at one” with it – a clear sign that Pierre Waché and Paul Monaghan et al have succeeded in widening the car’s operating window to make it a more compliant machine.

But where it is still lacking is in outright performance – an area that will be addressed as the season unfolds and developments are brought to the car, grounds for optimism in the camp as Red Bull has slightly more wind tunnel allowance than McLaren and Ferrari.

After three races and having got that first win under his belt, Verstappen was open about the fact there’s still work to do to get back to Red Bull’s expectations of itself.

“But it does show that if we really nail everything, we can be up there,” he said.

“But from our side, we want to be better than just sometimes being up there. So we just keep working hard and just see where we can be at in Bahrain already. Hopefully, we keep on improving the car, you know, with the through corner balance, and then, hopefully it also unlocks, just in general, a bit more pace.”

The persistent Max Verstappen rumours

Verstappen is under contract with Red Bull until the end of the F1 2028 championship, but that hasn’t stopped all sorts of speculation from emerging over the last 12 months that the Dutch driver could be set for a move to another team.

With Red Bull going through off-track turmoil last year as team boss Christian Horner and Verstappen’s father Jos failed to see eye to eye – Verstappen Snr calling for Horner’s job in the wake of the initial dismissal of an internal investigation into allegations of Horner’s behaviour – the speculation initially focused on a potential switch to Mercedes as Toto Wolff sought a replacement for the departing Lewis Hamilton.

This speculation was kept stoked by Verstappen senior being seen regularly in discussions with senior Mercedes personnel in the paddock but, with Max himself eventually publicly stating he would definitely be remaining at Red Bull, the rumours died down before being quashed entirely as Mercedes signed Kimi Antonelli for F1 2025.

With Mercedes’ future seemingly set with home-grown talent in Russell and Antonelli, Wolff said, “We stand behind the decision we have made and our two drivers.”

Pressed on Verstappen, Wolff was dismissive: “That question is not relevant now. There is no exchange there.”

Verstappen’s father Jos also recently took to social media to laugh off a Dutch F1 pundit’s prediction that his son will start the F1 2026 with Mercedes, describing the claim as “nonsense.”

Over the winter, rumour suggested Aston Martin had made a $1 billion move to sign Verstappen, a move which would reunite Verstappen with Honda power in 2026 – the engine which has powered him to all his titles – as well as with designer Adrian Newey – the architect of all his title-winning cars.

There is logic to the speculation – Aston Martin is a team with all the ingredients in place to become a front-runner, but it is an unproven entity without a Grand Prix win to its name in its present iteration.

Added to that, Verstappen referred to Honda in the past tense when he spoke glowingly about them having given them a home race victory in the final year of him racing with Honda power at Red Bull.

“I’ve really enjoyed my time with them—how they also work, how professional they are and how dedicated they are,” he said.

“They’ve given me so much. Together we’ve won four Drivers’ Championships and two Constructors’. It’s been unbelievable and also, of course, something you’ll never forget.

“And it did cross my mind while driving as well. I said it would be insane to win here today, also for Honda on their track as well. So maybe gave that extra motivation to try to stay ahead. But yeah, it’s a proper send-off.”

Obviously, the lack of hinting at a possible future reunion doesn’t mean anything in particular – it’s just good PR work – but it could have been an easy one to trip up over.

It would also be very easy to imagine that if Verstappen does have doubts and has been properly irritated by the constant headlines and turmoil surrounding the team – as well as having other voices whispering in his ear – starting afresh elsewhere might have quite an appeal.

What is highly likely for F1 2026 is that there will be a change in the pecking order. With huge rule changes on the way, the uncertainty over who may come out on top for the first year of the new rules means it’s a guessing game as to which manufacturer may get it right.

Mercedes, in particular, are proven in this area, while Honda bounced back from its late entry to the hybrid era to become the dominant force by the time of the introduction of an engine freeze after 2021. Red Bull’s burgeoning power unit arm, RPBT, is a complete newcomer and, given the complexity of the regulations, perhaps represents a slightly greater risk.

Has Verstappen questioned his future and whether Red Bull is the best place for him to stay? It would be remiss of him not to.

With Red Bull going through something of a period of transition as Newey departed after almost two decades, promoting Waché, and reshuffling the board a little as Jonathan Wheatley took up the option of becoming team boss at Sauber/Audi, the momentum that Red Bull has had in recent years could potentially be ending.

F1, by its nature, is cyclical – and Red Bull has been at, or very close to, the top for over half a decade. Does Verstappen harbour doubts that Red Bull still has all the ingredients in place to continue giving him the weapons to fight for titles?

Added to that was his displeasure over how the furore of replacing Liam Lawson as his teammate was handled, with the Dutch driver revealing he had made his feelings known regarding the replacement – a process that was kicked off by Helmut Marko after the Australian GP weekend before Christian Horner and both sets of shareholders reached a unanimous conclusion.

Will Japanese GP have eased any potential Max Verstappen doubts?

If Verstappen has had doubts, the ability of Red Bull to create another race-winning car – even if not the outright quickest at present – almost a full year on from Newey’s departure from the coalface may have given him quite a lot of reassurance that the oft-quoted “strength and depth” within Red Bull is very real.

Perhaps it’s this realisation, on top of pride in his own performances, that meant Verstappen’s jubilation shone through after a difficult start to the Japanese weekend. Not only is the car roughly capable of wins, but it still had a clear edge on Mercedes and Ferrari, and the team had a good enough understanding of what was going on to be able to steadily improve the car through the weekend.

Added to that is the fact that the key pillars of Verstappen’s happiness at Red Bull still remain in place. Last year, Marko signed a contract with the racing team to strengthen his bond with the organisation for which he is already a director, while Red Bull promoted GianPiero Lambiase – Verstappen’s long-time race engineer with whom he enjoys a ‘brotherly’ relationship – to head of race engineering.

After almost a decade racing for Red Bull, and personal life changes on the way as Verstappen is set to welcome a child with partner Kelly Piquet this summer, if the Dutch driver is reaching a crossroads over what to do professionally, the Japanese GP may just have given him a guiding light for the immediate future.

While others will no doubt continue to throw temptation his way, there is not yet any clear logic to make choosing a rival team the better choice than remaining with the team that has built its entire operations around him – McLaren, the only team with a clear edge at this exact point in time, has no available seats any time soon. A fresh start, at this point, would require Verstappen to simply have lost confidence in Red Bull moreso than being convinced of a rival’s strength.

Perhaps it’s for this reason that Verstappen ran in to embrace Horner in parc fermé in Japan – an acknowledgement that the British team boss, despite the constant noise and turbulence that has surrounded the team, has continued to keep Verstappen in a capable car and surrounded by personnel with the continued sharpness and ability to fight for another title.

Of course, one swallow does not a summer make, and nor does one Grand Prix win. McLaren’s pace advantage is still substantial, to the point where Verstappen still risks becoming a mere deuteragonist to the McLaren duo if they can extract more of the car’s potential on a regular basis.

On top of that are the continued question marks over the correlation between the team’s software and the real world – after Waché’s admission to PlanetF1.com during testing that he “isn’t confident” that the issues aren’t fully alleviated.

“But, at some point, you have to use the tools you have and take all the information you can to make some decision,” he said.

“We still have, and I think everybody has… not correlation, but you need some extrapolation of what will happen in your tools to the track.

“It is a part of the engineering job we are doing. The confidence is, I don’t think it is 100 percent, but it is not a showstopper.

“You have to use what you know, what you control, and make sure that the extrapolation works as much as possible, and improve the way you operate in your tools.”

Comments from Yuki Tsunoda over the weekend, in which he said he found the real-world handling of the RB21 quite different to the sim, brought this back into focus but, as Waché suggested, it perhaps isn’t a “showstopper” between now and the beginning of use of Red Bul’s own brand-new wind tunnel.

The remainder of this season thus becomes about whether or not Red Bull can continue reassuring Verstappen that it has come through on the other side of the turmoil of last season, particularly as talk of performance exit clauses has recently come to the fore.

As would be the case with most contracts, Verstappen is purported to have a performance clause related to his and the team’s positioning in the world championship – perhaps hastening Red Bull’s desire to give him a more capable teammate after the extent of Lawson’s struggles became clear.

Red Bull’s victory in Japan will no doubt have offered reassurance to both sides that the performance level might just be there to keep the boxes ticked and head off any possibility that Verstappen might seek a way out – if that is a path he’s still considering.

There’s also the factor that fighting back against external enemies, working collaboratively within an organisation to overcome hurdles together, may simply increase Verstappen’s bond with his team ever further – the hardships strengthening, rather than diminishing.

With every team representing a big unknown for next year, the Dutch driver has said nothing has changed in relation to his situation with Red Bull, saying, “I’m actually very relaxed, I’m very positive in my mind, I’m enjoying life.

“So every time I jump in the car, I just try to do the best I can and I’m not thinking about anything else, to be honest, because I feel good in life in general, if that’s in the car, outside the car, and that’s actually what matters the most.”

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