Friday Notebook: Verstappen quickest in Mexico — and still not happy — as Red Bull wrestles its second-seat puzzle
Max Verstappen ended Friday in Mexico on top of the timesheets and not entirely at ease. At altitude, the numbers looked good; the feeling did not. The four-time World Champion has been here enough to know when a quick lap flatters a car, and his mood suggested there’s more work to do before qualifying bites.
Away from the stopwatch, Verstappen also reopened a conversation Red Bull probably hoped had cooled: Liam Lawson’s rapid promotion-and-demotion saga. With Sergio Perez gone, Lawson got the nod to partner Verstappen — for two race weekends. Then came the switchback to Racing Bulls before Japan, a call Verstappen didn’t agree with at the time and still doesn’t. For a driver who keeps his circle small and his standards high, that’s not nothing.
It feeds into a broader, familiar question swirling around Milton Keynes: what exactly is the plan for the second car?
Since Daniel Ricciardo left at the end of 2018, Red Bull has cycled through talented names without finding the consistent foil Verstappen had in his early title runs. The latest shuffle saw Yuki Tsunoda step in after Lawson, struggle to make it stick, and end 2025 earmarked for a test/reserve role. Isack Hadjar is next into the fire.
Ex-F1 racer and Sky analyst Karun Chandhok framed the problem as a philosophical one, and he’s right. Does Red Bull design a car explicitly around Verstappen’s peculiar superpowers and accept the turbulence on the other side of the garage? Or do they widen the operating window and sacrifice a sliver of outright performance to help a second driver live in the top four every Sunday? If the goal is to bag both titles again — and it always is — that choice matters as much as the name on the headrest.
Ferrari, meanwhile, is facing its own big-picture reflection. The Scuderia swung for the fences in 2025: it tried to lure Adrian Newey, the architect behind so many of Verstappen’s weapons, and missed — Newey chose Aston Martin. Marquee plan B was hardly small: Lewis Hamilton in red. But the seven-time champ’s first campaign in Ferrari colors didn’t land with the thunder fans imagined, and the question being whispered in the paddock is uncomfortable but fair: did Ferrari chase the wrong icon? Six-time grand prix winner Riccardo Patrese kept his powder dry when asked, which tells you all you need to know. At Maranello, the winter will be long and honest.
If the 2025 championship remains a live wire, 2026 is already humming. Williams became the first team to show its hand for the new era, pulling the covers off a fan-voted “Flow State” test livery for the FW48. With ground rules changing again — new chassis and power unit regulations — the car will turn its first laps in a behind-closed-doors Barcelona run in January. It’s only a paint job for a mule, sure, but it’s a signal: Williams wants to look sharp while it sharpens up.
Mercedes, for its part, did the modern thing and dropped a soundbite. Literally. The team shared audio of its 2026 power unit firing up, following Honda’s lead in letting fans hear the future before they see it. There’s intrigue baked in because the Mercedes unit won’t just live in the works car; it’ll also power McLaren, Williams and Alpine. One PU, four teams, a reset on aero and battery deployment rules — it’s the kind of convergence that can rearrange the grid.
Back in Mexico, the weekend threatens to tell us something about Red Bull’s balance of power in the short term and its direction of travel in the long. Verstappen is still Verstappen — quick on Friday, ruthlessly analytical at dusk — but the human story sits right next to the lap charts. Lawson got the nod, then the nudge. Tsunoda took the seat, then the step back. Hadjar is next. And the car itself? It may need to be as friendly to a second driver as it is to the one rewriting the record book.
None of this guarantees drama on Sunday. But if you’re listening carefully — to Verstappen’s tone, to the footwork in Red Bull’s junior dance, to the distant growl of Mercedes’ next engine and the rustle of new camouflage in Grove — the sport is already moving on two timelines. One ends here, with a podium and a plane. The other starts in January, engines behind closed doors and months of answers we can’t hear yet.
For now, Mexico belongs to Verstappen on paper. The rest of it? That’s the kind of uncertainty F1 does better than anyone.
