Juan Pablo Montoya’s take on the Max Verstappen-to-McLaren noise cuts through the usual paddock froth because it doesn’t start with lap time. It starts with the one thing every superstar driver eventually has to weigh up: leverage.
Verstappen’s future has been kicked around for long enough that most people in the sport can recite the usual beats from memory — the loyalty talk, the “family” line, the moments when it all looks strained, and the fact the rumours never really go away. What’s changed in 2026 isn’t that Verstappen is suddenly unhappy, or that Red Bull is suddenly panicking. It’s the identity of the team he’s now being linked to.
With PlanetF1.com reporting he’s in advanced talks with McLaren over a move for 2027, Montoya has effectively asked the question that matters: if you’re Verstappen, what exactly are you buying by leaving, beyond the satisfaction of reminding everyone you always have options?
“The million-dollar question is… if he were to go somewhere, he already deserves to go somewhere strong,” Montoya said on his MontoyAS podcast. And then came the warning that’s as old as driver transfers and as current as next weekend’s headlines: the grass isn’t always greener.
That line can sound like an easy cliché, but Montoya’s point is sharper than that. Verstappen isn’t a driver hunting for a lifeline; he’s a driver with a megaphone. In modern F1, the biggest contract isn’t just about salary — it’s about power. Power to shape a team’s priorities, power to dictate how hard the organisation commits to the car concept you want, power to force difficult internal calls to be made in your favour.
Viewed through that lens, the McLaren angle becomes less about escape and more about pressure.
There’s a suggestion — unconfirmed, but doing the rounds — that Mark Mateschitz isn’t impressed by Verstappen refusing an option to effectively erase his exit clause by taking extra money. If that’s even half-true, it speaks to a relationship that has moved beyond simple driver-and-team dynamics into something more corporate and more brittle: a major asset asking for guarantees, and stakeholders wanting certainty in return for the kind of investment Red Bull has long made around its lead driver.
It’s also where the sporting detail becomes combustible. Verstappen is understood to be able to leave if he sits lower than P2 in the drivers’ standings at the summer break. The numbers, as framed in the report, are stark: he’s 78 points off P2 with only 50 points left on offer before that checkpoint. If those figures hold, it turns the “exit clause” from abstract contract talk into a live mechanism — not because Verstappen is suddenly powerless, but because a contract clause can create momentum all on its own. Teams plan. Sponsors ask questions. Rivals circle.
Montoya, though, isn’t convinced a jump automatically improves Verstappen’s world.
“From a distance it looks very nice, but sometimes, when you stand on it, you say, ‘Oh, what did I get myself into,’” he said. It’s the line that should give any driver pause — particularly one who has never had to rebuild his entire working environment at this stage of his career.
Because the uncomfortable truth is that Verstappen’s Red Bull reality is tailored to him in a way no prospective destination can promise on day one. Everything from engineering structure to decision-making culture has, over the years, been geared around maximising him. Even when Red Bull’s form has fluctuated, the team’s instinct has been to pull in the direction he needs.
And that’s where Montoya’s most pointed observation lands: if the goal is to jolt Red Bull into action, has it not already worked?
He notes that Red Bull has, in his view, developed its 2026 car more than anyone else across the season so far — which makes the idea of Verstappen using the market purely as a motivational tool feel slightly harder to justify. “So how are you going to complain?” Montoya asked.
That’s not to say there isn’t logic to keeping other teams interested. If you’re Verstappen and you want Red Bull to keep pushing, you don’t do it by smiling through every press conference and telling everyone you’ll be there forever. You do it by making sure the rest of the grid believes you’re gettable — and, crucially, that your own team believes it too.
Still, a McLaren move would be a different sort of gamble to the ones Verstappen has made before. There’s a massive difference between applying pressure while staying put and actually stepping into a new ecosystem where you’re no longer the established centre of gravity. Even the best teams can misread what a driver needs, and even the best drivers can underestimate how long it takes to get a new group truly working at their frequency.
Montoya also floated another practical constraint: if Verstappen does decide to move, the obvious top alternative isn’t necessarily open. He referenced the chatter that George Russell is already locked in for next year, which only adds to the broader point — the “where would you go?” question isn’t solved just because you’re Max Verstappen.
That’s why this story feels less like a simple transfer saga and more like a high-stakes negotiation playing out in public. Verstappen’s contract situation, Red Bull’s internal appetite for risk, and McLaren’s willingness to reshape its own structure to accommodate the sport’s biggest prize all intersect here.
And somewhere in the middle of it, Montoya is basically telling Verstappen what plenty in the paddock are thinking quietly: if you’re going to trade the certainty of a team built around you for the promise of something “better”, you’d better be sure you’re not just swapping one set of problems for another — only this time, in a place where you don’t yet own the room.
