Jos Verstappen has never been much for diplomatic paddock etiquette, and he wasn’t about to start now.
After Ralf Schumacher suggested Max Verstappen is feeling the absence of Helmut Marko inside Red Bull, Verstappen’s father responded on social media with a blunt assessment: “Ralf talks a lot off bulls**t.”
It’s a line delivered with typical Jos economy, but it lands in the middle of a very real mood around Max’s season so far — and around Red Bull more broadly. Three races into 2026, Verstappen has 12 points. By his standards, that’s not a slow start, it’s a different universe. And while Max has been careful to separate what he says about the new rules from what he says about his team, he hasn’t hidden his irritation with the sport’s 2026 direction, admitting at the Japanese Grand Prix that he’s weighing up his future in Formula 1.
That context matters, because Schumacher’s argument wasn’t really about Marko as a decision-maker. It was about Marko as an anchor: the familiar voice, the internal enforcer, the guy who could cut through noise and give the operation a sense of direction. With Marko now gone, Schumacher claimed Red Bull is “missing Marko as a figure to give some kind of guidance.”
Jos Verstappen isn’t buying it, and his son’s own comments offer a more nuanced picture than the one being argued over on TV panels and timelines. Max has said he’s still in touch with Marko despite his departure from parent company Red Bull GmbH last December — just not in the way people might assume.
Ahead of the Australian Grand Prix, Verstappen explained the relationship is still there, even if the day-to-day has changed.
“Maybe a few less Austrian-sided jokes from Helmut, but I’m in touch with him anyway,” Verstappen said. “Maybe not so much about details of the car, but just life. I shared so many moments with him so, of course, it will feel a little bit different in the garage, but you also have to just look ahead.
“You have to think about performance but at the same time, like I said, great relationship and we stay in touch anyway.”
That’s the key point Red Bull’s critics often skip: Marko’s influence on Verstappen has never been only technical. It’s been personal, political, cultural — the glue of a long partnership that helped define an era. Losing him from the garage doesn’t mean the line of communication has been cut. But it does mean the atmosphere has shifted, and you don’t need a former driver to tell you that.
Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies has also publicly tried to damp down the idea that Marko has vanished from the picture entirely, insisting Marko remains “very open and available to us” even after officially cutting ties.
Marko, for his part, has already reappeared in a new role: he’s been appointed an ambassador for the Red Bull Ring, the home of the Austrian Grand Prix. Officially, that’s separate. Practically, it keeps a familiar Red Bull figure in familiar Red Bull places — and that’s seldom accidental in this sport.
What makes Schumacher’s comment combustible isn’t just the Marko angle. It’s the timing. Verstappen’s difficult opening to 2026 is being accompanied by a set of departures that would put any team under scrutiny, never mind one trying to reset itself after a turbulent couple of years.
The latest headline was the confirmation that Gianpiero Lambiase — Verstappen’s long-serving race engineer and one of the most recognisable voices on F1 radio — is set to join McLaren “no later” than the 2028 season. That’s not imminent in competitive terms, but it’s massive in symbolic terms. You don’t often get that kind of clarity that far out, and you don’t often see a driver-engineer pairing that central to a team’s modern identity being lined up to split.
It also arrived against the backdrop of other staff movement around Verstappen’s side of the garage. A senior member of his pit crew, Ole Schack, is due to leave after more than two decades at Red Bull, while Jon Caller — Verstappen’s number-one mechanic — is understood to have handed in his resignation not long after his twin brother Matt departed for Audi.
None of these exits, taken alone, amount to crisis. But in aggregate they paint the picture of a team still shedding skin, and a driver who is increasingly being asked — implicitly or otherwise — to commit to the next version of Red Bull while familiar pieces around him are either leaving or being reshuffled.
This is where the Marko debate becomes more than nostalgia. Marko’s value wasn’t simply in spotting talent or playing hardball in meetings. He represented continuity. A totem, for want of a better word, that linked Verstappen’s earliest Red Bull years to the winning machine that followed. And when that kind of figure steps away, it’s natural for outsiders to wonder what fills the space — and whether the lead driver feels it.
Jos Verstappen’s intervention reads as a rejection of the whole framing: that Max is somehow lost without Marko, or that Marko’s absence is the explanation for a sluggish points tally in a new-era championship. It also feels like a warning shot at how quickly narratives are being built around his son’s mood.
Because here’s the reality: Verstappen doesn’t need Marko to tell him where the lap time is. He needs a car he can lean on and a team structure that convinces him the next two or three years won’t be spent wrestling compromises he doesn’t believe in. Right now, he’s not getting that car — and he’s watching the people around him start to move.
If Red Bull wants to calm the noise, it won’t do it by arguing over whether Marko’s guidance is being missed. It’ll do it the old-fashioned way: by showing up with performance, and by proving that whatever version of Red Bull comes after Horner, Newey and Marko is still capable of being the place Verstappen wants to bet his prime on.
Until then, every stray comment will be treated like a clue — and every blunt reply from Jos will only add to the sense that this isn’t just an off-track spat. It’s a family protecting its corner while the paddock tries to work out where the ground is moving next.
