Max Verstappen on Red Bull's Performance and Future Goals

Max Verstappen sits down, clocks the stifling heat and immediately reaches for the fan.

“It’s too hot in here,” he says, shifting the airflow his way. No small talk. No soft landing. Just Max, on the eve of the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, ready to unload on a season he describes in one blunt phrase: “We are not in a title fight.”

The four-time world champion has just signed a fresh two-year extension with Red Bull, theoretically tying him to the team until the end of 2030. In practice, little changes. The performance clauses remain. The escape hatch stays in place. He earns more, but if Red Bull cannot give him a car to fight at the front next year, the prospect of him walking away from the project still looms.

For now, though, he is all in. And he wants the car to catch up.

“We are not in a title fight”

Verstappen doesn’t dress up the reality of Red Bull’s 2026 campaign.

“Of course it’s not where I want to be,” he says. “As a team we’re trying to just learn and understand a lot of things for next year. We are not in a title fight. We are just trying to find more performance.”

He knows exactly where the frustration lies: at the core of the car.

“Overall we’re just lacking a bit of performance. The car is not where I want it to be feeling-wise, and the through-corner balance is too hit and miss between entry, mid and exit.

“It’s just fundamentally something in the car that we need to try and work on for the next year.”

This isn’t a one-off blip. The pattern has been there across different regulations. That, he admits, is a concern inside the team.

“There’s also things that we talk about within the team, like how can that happen, how can we fix it? Some people have left, new people have come in. With the new people, we are discussing what we can do about it. Is that just some changes, a different philosophy? All these kind of things.”

Red Bull’s once untouchable dominance has eroded. Verstappen isn’t pretending otherwise. But he is not running from the mess either.

Why he stayed

So why recommit now, with no guarantee of a quick fix?

“It comes down to also feeling well within a team. This is like a second family to me,” he says. “The belief that you can turn things around, you can build towards hopefully a better future with other people, new people.

“At the end of the day, it’s not only Formula 1 for me. There are a lot of things that I’m doing next year that Red Bull is involved in as well. I feel good here. So this, for me, is the right place to be.”

He insists the contract talks were never a drama.

“I always said to them: ‘Don’t stress about it, just work on the car.’ Because the faster the car goes, the easier the decision is anyway.

“I can understand, of course, maybe sometimes they were a little bit worried. But at the same time, for me, I was just worried about here, what was going on.”

He had options. Conversations with Mercedes last year, McLaren this year. Those weren’t idle chats.

“Of course, any kind of chat you take seriously. They’re all very respectful chats. There’s nothing wrong with that.

“I felt that staying was, for me, the right choice. You have to follow your heart. I could have run away very early on in my Red Bull career and gone somewhere else to try and win. If you have a little bit of patience, you do end up winning. I feel like that’s my approach now as well.”

Then comes the line that tells you how he sees his role in this project.

“It’s easy to run to the fastest car and then do it all again. But it’s not how I am. You cannot be the captain of the ship and as soon as there is something not working, you jump off the ship.

“It’s been a bit downwards from the dominant years, but I don’t mind also rebuilding it. It’s another challenge as well.”

Pure racing at the Nordschleife

Ask Verstappen what he has enjoyed most this year and he doesn’t mention Formula 1 at all. His eyes light up for something else entirely: the Nurburgring 24 Hours.

“Probably the Nordschleife,” he says. “It was super-cool to be able to do an endurance event with my team-mates, the guys that won with the car throughout the main season.

“We knew that we were going to be really strong. We peaked at the right time, but unfortunately the car retired. It was an incredible experience. And pure. Pure motorsport.”

His first stint became an instant talking point: from 10th to first in treacherous, drizzling conditions, through crashes and Code 60s.

“I was enjoying it. Not easy conditions. It started to drizzle. The track was slippery. Crashes. Code 60s.

“Some people were like: ‘Let’s see how he will do in the race under pressure with all these kinds of scenarios that he has never done before.’

“But I have done them a million times on the simulator. I have done so many laps and 24-hour races on the simulator. I never felt out of depth or whatever. I was fully zoned in. I just had a great time.

“Once I was in the race, you switch to another level. I was just in a zone. It’s really enjoyable.”

He wants more of it. Not just another crack at the Nordschleife, but the full endurance portfolio.

“All the endurance races. Eventually, of course also Hypercar. I don’t want to rush it. I want to do it in the right environment. On my terms. And competitive.”

And Le Mans with Fernando Alonso?

“We’ve talked about it. I mean, look at Fernando. He’s 45 and he’s still flying. Especially for Le Mans, with his experience, it could be a good option.

“It needs to fit our schedules. It needs to make sense. It needs to be on my terms. And there needs to be a real chance to go there and win it.”

“So unnatural”: his war with the current engines

Verstappen has been one of the loudest voices against Formula 1’s current and future engine direction. In Japan, he openly asked: “Is it worth it?” So what kept him in?

“Hoping that it will be better in the future. Accepting where we are at the moment. Still the love for the sport. Not at the moment the driving. But the love for the sport.

“I love competition, naturally. I just hope that in the coming years, towards 2030, it can only get better. And to start to make the best of it, because these are the rules for the next four or five years.”

He wants people to understand why the drivers are so irritated by the hybrid systems and battery management that define modern F1.

“In the history of the sport, normally the driver that is the most committed, the latest on the brakes, earlier on throttle, committing in the high speed, they get rewarded, because you just gain that time in the corner.

“But now you’re constantly thinking about, ‘In this corner I might have to hold in a bit. Go later on throttle. Or brake earlier. Or lift off. And then I have more top speed.’ Stuff like that. It’s so unnatural. It’s so not how it should be.”

Then he makes a pointed comparison to underline how much, in his view, the cars are masking differences between drivers.

“No disrespect. And I hope no-one picks up on this. But look at Yuki. He jumps in the Racing Bulls car at the Dutch Grand Prix. Never driven the car before. Immediately competitive.

“Liam jumps from the Racing Bulls to the Red Bull – immediately competitive. It’s because these cars are numb to your driver inputs.

“Of course, yes, you still have to do a good lap. And you still have to commit. The fastest drivers will always come out on top. But it’s really, really limited, like a choke hold or something. You’re held back.”

The sport has already accepted it needs to rebalance the power units, moving the internal combustion–electrical split to 60-40 by 2028. Verstappen wants more. Much more.

“It has to go back to a V8, just for drivability already. When you drive the old cars, you cannot imagine the difference in how the engine responds, or the drivability you get. And how terrible or horrible it actually is now compared to just having a V8.”

Even the previous turbo-hybrid era, he says, can’t compare.

“Also horrible, the feeling compared to a V8. The V8 is so much better. It is so much more free, lighter. Cars are so heavy nowadays.

“It is better to just have a smaller V8 engine, much lighter. Try to really limit the battery size to maybe like a kind of push-to-pass battery. But you should not have it involved or any kind of proper normal performance running.”

And, in his ideal world, no turbo either.

“Ideally not, because that introduces turbo lag.”

So what keeps him going in F1, if the driving itself no longer delivers the raw hit it once did?

“I have been lucky that the years before have been quite decent. Not how I wanted it to be with the battery side of things.

“But just the emotion of the V8, of the V10, back in the day, when I was a kid. You walk around, you hear these cars go out, you have goosebumps.

“Even if you go 300km/h compared to now sometimes 350, 360, it doesn’t matter.

“It is the emotion of the noise that you get from these cars, of the vibration. It is just another level. And I really hope that that thing will come back.”

“I am a winning machine when I need to be”

To the outside world, Verstappen can look like a cold, relentless winning machine. He doesn’t reject that label. He just narrows its scope.

“I am a winning machine when I need to be. But I can also switch off, and enjoy my life outside of racing.

“But anything racing-related, of course I am a winning machine. I demand a lot from the people in the team. They also expect me to perform and do the best job I can.

“That is what you get paid for at the end of the day. We have the same target. The same goal.”

He knows he can sound abrasive. He has no intention of changing.

“Of course I can be very outspoken. But that is what I like. That is also with our culture.

“And that is how I approach my life also outside of F1, with my GT3 team. We do not hold back. At least for me, you need to be like that to really get the best out of everyone.”

Honesty, for Verstappen, is not a branding exercise. It is the only way he knows how to operate.

“I just want to be myself. I know there are a lot of politics in Formula 1, and I understand also between the teams there are a lot of politics.

“You will always speak for yourself in terms of where you think you might have an advantage or not as a team. That is normal. Also with the engines and the chassis, it is the same thing.

“When it is good, it is good. When it is bad, it is bad. You will hear it from me because that is how I like to operate. And I am not holding back from that.”

So he stays. In a car he doesn’t like enough, under rules he openly criticises, in a sport he still loves. He calls it patience. Others might call it a gamble.

If Red Bull can’t turn this ship around, how long will the captain really stay on board?