Max Verstappen turning up in Barcelona and leaving with another points-only weekend has become an unwelcome motif of Red Bull’s 2026 so far. Seven grands prix in, the four-time world champion still hasn’t won, has managed just a single podium, and sits seventh in the standings on 55 points — a staggering 101 adrift of championship leader Kimi Antonelli.
That form line is bad enough on its own. The bigger problem for Red Bull is what it does to the most sensitive part of Verstappen’s contract: the leverage.
Verstappen is understood to have two more years on his current deal, but with an exit clause that could be triggered at the end of this season if he’s lower than second in the championship. After Barcelona, he’s 60 points behind Lewis Hamilton in P2. In other words, the clause is no longer an abstract paddock talking point. It has a pulse.
It’s in that context Jacques Villeneuve’s warning landed with a thud. Speaking on Sky Sports F1, the 1997 world champion painted Red Bull’s current condition not as a temporary dip, but as something closer to a slide that hasn’t finished yet — and he thinks the team can’t afford to let Verstappen even entertain the idea of pulling the ripcord.
“They need to find a way to try and keep him there because he’s the only good thing in the team right now other than the engine,” Villeneuve said. “It’s become a very political place in the last two or three years. It seems that there’s so much internal strife on who’s going to lead, who’s going to do that, and everybody’s been kicked out.
“They rode the wave. Right now they’re going down, and they haven’t reached the bottom yet.”
The “political” framing is telling, because this isn’t simply about a car that’s slipped backwards. It’s about whether Red Bull still looks like a place where elite people want to work, and where an elite driver can trust the programme will be pointed in a coherent direction next month, next year, and into the next set of regulations. Villeneuve’s point — bluntly delivered, but not hard to recognise around the paddock — is that Red Bull no longer carries that old aura of being the sharp, slightly chaotic outfit that always found a way out.
“It’s lost its sparkle,” he said. “Nobody talks about the Red Bull team as, ‘The crazy, fun, fast team. They will always find a solution.’ No, they’re not even part of the equation anymore… We just talk about, ‘It’s tough on Max, but thank God he’s there because he can still drive this car hard.’ That’s more of the narrative right now. Not the team but Max.”
Red Bull’s senior hierarchy clearly understands what’s at stake. Verstappen met with top company figures ahead of the Barcelona weekend, including Red Bull GmbH co-owners Mark Mateschitz and Chalerm Yoovidhya, plus CEO Oliver Mintzlaff. The gist: reassurance sought that Verstappen would stay committed beyond this year.
The response, at least as it’s been characterised, will make uncomfortable reading in Milton Keynes. Verstappen reportedly refused to offer that commitment — and declined the chance to buy out the escape clause entirely. If Red Bull were hoping for a clean show of faith to calm the waters, they didn’t get it.
Where Villeneuve goes further is in connecting that uncertainty to the sheer scale of change inside the team. In recent seasons Red Bull has said goodbye to key figures, including Adrian Newey, Christian Horner and Jonathan Wheatley, and more recently Helmut Marko. Villeneuve’s take is that Verstappen is now the last remaining pillar from the era that delivered four straight titles from 2021 to 2024 — and that is not a stable way to run a modern F1 operation.
“They’ve gotten rid of everyone that’s made this team what it is today,” Villeneuve said. “He was the last addition to the team, but now he’s the last remaining soldier, and that makes it really, really tough because he cannot handle the team on his own.
“He’s not a car designer. He’s very good at developing a car, saying what’s needed, but you still need the people around you.”
Villeneuve did add a note of optimism — or perhaps inevitability — that the team will be rebuilt once the internal politics settle. But in F1, time is the one resource you never truly have. Red Bull’s problem isn’t whether it can recover in the long term; it’s whether it can convince Verstappen to sit through the messy middle.
From Verstappen’s side, the message is outwardly still one of loyalty — with a very specific caveat. His manager Raymond Vermeulen, speaking to Bild, stressed that the contract runs to 2028, that exit clauses have “always been” there, and that they’ve never used one.
“On the contrary, we’ve always been loyal and will remain so,” Vermeulen said. “We want to continue on this path with Red Bull and for Max to end his career here – but, of course, with the chance to win.”
That last line is the entire story, really. Loyalty in F1 is rarely unconditional; it’s an agreement to keep choosing the same future because the alternative looks worse. Right now, with Mercedes links resurfacing and Red Bull’s points deficit ballooning, the future is exactly what’s being questioned.
And the championship table is doing Red Bull no favours. Verstappen isn’t merely missing wins; he’s in the dangerous zone where one more difficult stretch turns an exit clause from leverage into logic. If you’re Red Bull, you don’t just need upgrades. You need momentum — political, operational, and on-track — before the season drifts to the point where Verstappen’s decision stops being about emotion and starts being about arithmetic.
