Photo: Lukas Raich, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
When Red Bull announced in August that Max Verstappen had scrapped the final two years of his old contract and signed on through 2030, the framing everywhere was loyalty: a four-time champion recommitting to the only Formula 1 team he’s ever driven for. A new interview with German outlet Bild, relayed this week by Reuters, adds a detail nobody had confirmed before: the real alternative Verstappen was weighing wasn’t a switch to McLaren. It was walking away from the sport entirely.
The Real Choice
Verstappen didn’t dance around the question. Asked about the McLaren talks that had fueled months of speculation, he said “I was closer to quitting Formula 1 than to signing with another racing team.” He described the decision as close to a coin flip and said he seriously considered calling it quits before ultimately deciding he loves racing too much to stop.
That’s a meaningfully different story than the one Backfire Racing covered when the extension itself became official at Zandvoort in August. His prior contract already ran through 2028, so this was never a driver staring down free agency or angling for a bigger paycheck elsewhere. The real decision tree had three branches, not two: stay at Red Bull, leave for a rival, or leave the sport altogether. Branch three, it turns out, got more serious consideration than almost anyone assumed at the time.
Why Retirement Was Even on the Table
It’s worth asking why a four-time champion with 71 career wins would seriously entertain retiring at 28. The answer is sitting in this year’s championship table. Red Bull has dropped to fourth in the constructors’ standings and still hasn’t won a race in 2026, its first season running a power unit the team now builds in-house with Ford after ending its partnership with Honda. Verstappen personally is winless through 14 races, with six podiums and 145 points, sixth in the drivers’ standings and 147 points behind runaway leader Kimi Antonelli after finishing runner-up at Spain’s inaugural Madrid Grand Prix. That deficit is the largest of his Red Bull career. We’ve made the case that the shortfall reads less like a raw pace problem and more like a consistency one, and that distinction matters here: a car that’s merely inconsistent is a far easier sell to a four-time champion than one that’s simply slow.
The Record Nobody Mentioned
One detail got buried under the “almost quit” headline. If Verstappen sees this deal through to 2030, he’ll have spent fifteen seasons with Red Bull, three longer than Lewis Hamilton’s run at Mercedes, currently the longest single-team career in Formula 1 history. Red Bull isn’t just keeping its championship-winning driver. It’s underwriting a longevity record that will outlast the tenure of most F1 team principals, including Laurent Mekies, who’s barely past his first year in the job.
One Seat Locked, One Seat Still Spinning
The contrast inside Red Bull’s own garage is hard to miss. The team’s most important seat is locked down for four more years. The other one has changed hands three times already this season. Isack Hadjar’s wrist injury has kept Liam Lawson on loan from Racing Bulls since Zandvoort, and his season-best result, sixth at Madrid, came in the same race weekend where Verstappen finished runner-up. Red Bull can plan a decade around Verstappen. It still can’t plan next month around the car next to him.
What Comes Next
Verstappen also drew a line under how far this commitment realistically stretches. Unlike Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso, who’s 45 and shows no urgency to stop racing, Verstappen said he doesn’t expect to still be competing into his 40s, calling that scenario unlikely even if impossible to guarantee either way. Ten more years with Red Bull was never really on the table. Four more, evidently, was worth fighting for.
The calendar doesn’t pause for any of this to settle. Formula 1 resumes in two weeks at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in Baku, where Red Bull gets another shot at its first win of 2026 and Hadjar’s timeline for a return should start to firm up. Verstappen just bought his team four years of certainty about where he’ll be. He didn’t buy Red Bull, or himself, any more patience about results.
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