Martin Brundle has offered his take on Max Verstappen’s threat to quit Formula 1, and feels the four-time world champion’s repeated complaints are getting “a bit boring”.
After finishing a frustrated eighth at the Japanese Grand Prix, Verstappen claimed he is seriously considering walking away from F1 at the end of the season amid his dissatisfaction with the new 2026 regulations.
Verstappen, who has been the loudest and harshest critic of the new power unit and chassis regulations, wants the rules to be changed because he feels the new cars are more about energy management than pure speed and driver skill.
Reacting to Verstappen’s latest comments on The F1 Show, former driver-turned-pundit Brundle said: “Max is very unfiltered, always has been and he’s talked a lot for a long time about not being in this for the long haul, I’m not going to be hanging around here in my forties, or whatever.
“Max would say it’s getting a bit boring now. I think it’s getting a bit boring with what he’s saying. Either go or stop talking about it, because it is what it is. You’ve got to make the most of it.
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“I would hugely miss his talent, his generational speed and car control is something that very few people in the history of motorsport have had. It’s quite extraordinary.
“And I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever, that given they were building their own power train for the first time, that his management would have put in an exit clause for the end of this year to see how it goes.
“Mercedes are saying ‘there’s no place at this particular inn’ at the moment, so quite what he would do I don’t know.
“Nobody’s indispensable in this business, I’ve seen a number of amazing people come through this sport and are no longer with us, or have worked on to something else, and the sport carries on. Murray Walker would be one of them.
“This goes for any of us. The minute we stop, people will be talking about whoever is doing the job next. There are any number of Antonellis, Bearmans, Lindblads there who would do the job incredibly well for one percent of the money.
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“So the sport will just move on if Max decides to go but he’s sort of doing quite a bit of damage meanwhile. But I think we all appreciate that’s how Max rock and rolls.”
Brundle said he would be surprised if Verstappen quit F1 and made a comparison to how seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher would have handled any grievances with the series.
“I’d be surprised if he really walks away from it. It’s great to be at the Nurburgring, I’ve done that. He’ll find the 24-hour race quite challenging, quite sketchy, but he’s got his own team. He loves that, he loves his sim racing,” he added.
“Do I think he’d just walk away from F1? No I don’t, providing he can get a car that pleases him. His points are brutally made, but actually well made, that this is just wrong at the moment.
“But what a [Michael] Schumacher would have done is close the door, thump the desk, metaphorically got hold of the right people by the throat, walked out and with a smile go ‘everything is fine’.
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“Then if they don’t sort it out, which we’re looking forward to for Miami, then you start going on to the media. But that’s not how he [Max] does things.”
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