Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies has insisted that Max Verstappen has “made clear” he wants to stay with the team, following reports linking him with a bombshell move to McLaren.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
It was reported by The Daily Mail earlier in the Austrian GP weekend that Red Bull’s Verstappen could be in line for a swap deal with Oscar Piastri at McLaren from as early as next year.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Verstappen has repeatedly made clear his frustrations at Red Bull being a midfield runner in 2026, with the Dutchman currently 101 points behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli after just seven grands prix.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The team has delivered a huge upgrade to its home race in Austria in a bid to shave off the final excess weight the RB22 is carrying.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Speaking directly to the rumour of Verstappen to McLaren, Mekies spoke of Red Bull’s desire to end the speculation around Verstappen’s future by providing him with what he seeks: a competitive car.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“I think the last time I was in this press conference, I think I said that I\u2019m not asking Max every week if he\u2019s going to stay,” Mekies told media, including RacingNews365.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“Max has made clear to us that he wants to continue with the team. It\u2019s equally clear that he needs a fast car for him to be happy with the team.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“You may recall also that he has been vocal about the progress that we needed to have on the regulations. We are in a fortunate situation for the sport where there have been very open sessions between FIA, F1 and the teams, and we have managed to tweak these regulations for 2027 and 2028.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“And I think it\u2019s great not only for Max, but it\u2019s great for the fast drivers, and it\u2019s great for the sport. So, as I said a few weeks ago, we are not asking Max every week.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“He\u2019s pushing with us, he\u2019s helping us to find the right development path for the car, again [on Friday] doing very large test scans through the sessions to try to turn all the stones as possible.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
“So, it\u2019s not a topic for us. The topic for us is to get the car back to where we want it to be, and as you may, I hope, agree, if the car is back where we want it to be, there will be no discussion.”\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies has insisted that Max Verstappen has “made clear” he wants to stay with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":763400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-763399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/763400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}