Max Verstappen to McLaren has become the sort of rumour that spreads because it’s just plausible enough to be fun. Fast car, stable operation, and a driver market that’s suddenly got sharp edges again in 2026 — you can see why it’s doing the rounds.
But Verstappen’s manager, Raymond Vermeulen, has poured cold water on the idea that anything concrete is happening behind the scenes with Woking.
“There’s no truth in that. There have been no negotiations,” Vermeulen said when asked about McLaren links.
That denial matters, yet it doesn’t close the story down. Because Vermeulen didn’t follow it up with the kind of unconditional commitment that normally kills a silly-season narrative stone dead. Instead, he effectively set Red Bull a short, very clear deadline: show the trajectory is real, and show it quickly.
“We’re going to wait and see how the car develops over the next few weeks,” Vermeulen said. “We definitely want to stay at Red Bull, but only with a car capable of winning.”
It’s the “next few weeks” line that lands with weight in the paddock. Not because anyone doubts Verstappen’s loyalty to the project — he’s said before he’d like to finish his F1 career with Red Bull — but because 2026 has exposed how thin the patience gets when the results don’t match the expectation. Vermeulen later reiterated that the goal remains “to finish this adventure together with Red Bull”, while adding a pointed reminder that Verstappen “was not born to compete in the midfield”.
Right now, that’s the uncomfortable reality Red Bull is trying to escape. Verstappen sits seventh in the Drivers’ Championship, and the mathematics around his contract have become part of the weekly noise. The widely reported performance-related exit clause would allow him to move if he’s outside the top two in the standings by the Hungarian Grand Prix. As things stand he’s 58 points behind second-placed George Russell, which makes the clause feel less like a remote legal curiosity and more like an active factor in the sport’s most important seat.
Red Bull, for its part, is trying to drag the conversation back onto the track. Team principal Laurent Mekies has been blunt about what keeps Verstappen: a quick car and visible progress. He’d pointed to Red Bull’s substantial Austrian Grand Prix upgrade package as a key step, suggesting it could bring the team to within three tenths of the front.
Austria, at least, gave them something tangible to point at. Verstappen finished second — his best result of the season — and was less than two seconds behind Russell at the flag. In a year where Red Bull has too often looked like it’s been fighting physics rather than rivals, that margin matters. The result didn’t magically rewrite the championship picture, but it did provide the one thing Red Bull desperately needed: evidence that the development direction isn’t a dead end.
The wider subtext here is that Red Bull is living through its first season as an engine manufacturer in the new 2026 landscape, and that’s a reputational battle as much as a competitive one. Internally, there’s encouragement: Vermeulen has spoken positively about the power unit, saying the “basis is right”. He also referenced that the internal combustion engine was rated best by the FIA at the first ADUO checkpoint — a detail Red Bull will gladly amplify any time the conversation turns to whether it can truly stand on its own two feet in this new era.
But Verstappen’s situation isn’t going to be decided by a promising report card or a single podium. Vermeulen’s comments make it sound more like a rolling evaluation: does the upgrade work, does the next one work, and is the trend strong enough that a driver with Verstappen’s expectations can believe in the 2026 campaign again.
As for the alternative options, the market is oddly constrained for a driver of his calibre — which is partly why the McLaren chatter has gained oxygen. Mercedes has been mentioned repeatedly, but Toto Wolff has already signalled he’s cooled that idea, at least publicly, in Austria. Ferrari looks closed off: Lewis Hamilton’s uptick in form has stiffened his position, and Charles Leclerc has recently signed a new long-term deal.
That leaves McLaren as the team people point to when they want the rumour to have a destination. Even the speculative “swap” idea — Verstappen in, Oscar Piastri out — has been floated in the background. Yet Vermeulen’s denial is clear: nothing is happening on that front right now.
Still, Red Bull can’t afford to treat the McLaren story as harmless gossip. Not when a contract clause is looming, not when Verstappen is P7, and not when the message from his camp is essentially: we want to stay, but we’re not staying to make up the numbers.
“Max is seventh in the championship,” Vermeulen said. “He and Red Bull don’t belong there, but it’s the reality.”
That’s the pressure point. The next few weeks won’t just decide whether Austria was a one-off spike or the start of a recovery — they’ll shape how loud, and how serious, the Verstappen market becomes heading into Hungary.
