{"id":788739,"date":"2026-07-09T07:50:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T07:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/788739\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T07:50:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T07:50:19","slug":"f1-news-2026-oscar-piastri-max-verstappen-switch-analysis-update-red-bull-racing-mclaren","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/788739\/","title":{"rendered":"F1 news 2026: Oscar Piastri, Max Verstappen switch analysis, update, Red Bull Racing, McLaren"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oscar Piastri<\/a>\u2019s management has denied reports the Aussie has activated a contract clause to leave McLaren<\/a> at season\u2019s end.<\/p>\n

Rumours of a potential switch involving Max Verstappen<\/a> and Piastri between Red Bull<\/a> and McLaren have been simmering since as early as last October<\/a>. But Brazilian motor sport website Grande Premio this week claimed the Melburnian had \u201csignalled his desire\u201d to leave the team, and was closing in on a Red Bull deal<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Oscar Piastri\u2019s camp has denied rumours he has \u2018signalled his intention\u2019 to leave McLaren.\u00a0AP Photo\/Darko Bandic<\/p>\n

The publication reported Piastri was set to activate a contract clause that would allow him to leave the team at the end of the season if he was not in the top five in the drivers\u2019 standings by the mid-season break in two races time.<\/p>\n

Verstappen is also widely believed to have a clause that would allow him to walk away from Red Bull if he\u2019s outside the top two by the same time.<\/p>\n

Piastri had a shocker last weekend at the British Grand Prix<\/a> \u2013 he finished seventh in the sprint and 11th in the grand prix after an opening lap collision with the Racing Bulls<\/a> of Liam Lawson<\/a>. It dropped him to sixth in the standings, 97 points behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli<\/a> and six points clear of Verstappen.<\/p>\n

While Piastri could easily get back into the top-five, Verstappen is 78 points from second \u2013 a mathematical impossibility.<\/p>\n

Piastri re-signed with McLaren on the eve of the 2025 season<\/a> on a multi-year deal that will theoretically keep him in Papaya until the end of 2028. Both he and chief executive Zak Brown as recently as last week reconfirmed their intention to honour the deal.<\/p>\n

But the Verstappen rumours continue to rumble. The Dutchman is deeply unhappy at Red Bull, and has spun off the track in similar circumstances at each of the last two race meetings.<\/p>\n

In the dying moments of qualifying in Austria<\/a>, Verstappen spun at the ultra-fast second-last corner. Then late in the race at Silverstone, he again spun off the track at a high-speed right-hander at Stowe and had to be fished out of the gravel trap.<\/p>\n

Both incidents are believed to be related to Red Bull\u2019s so-called \u2018Macarena\u2019 rear wing, which rotates 180 degrees instead of lifting when opened. In both incidents, Verstappen appeared to lose the rear end moments after the wing closed, with suggestions the spins are to do with the \u2018reconnection\u2019 of the air flow after the wing closes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s super-dangerous because (I could have hurt myself) two times,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was lucky in Austria, I was lucky here. That\u2019s why you get really fed up with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That Verstappen is starting to speak out against his own team is a sign he has little if any faith they can even build a car he can rely on.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Rumours of a potential swap between Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri just won’t go away.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

There is little doubt securing Verstappen would be a massive coup for McLaren, but his demands would no doubt go against the team\u2019s core philosophy of fairness.<\/p>\n

Since Daniel Ricciardo<\/a>\u2019s departure from Red Bull at the end of 2018, Verstappen has been the clear No.1 driver. McLaren famously do not have No.1 and No.2 drivers, and vow to treat each driver equally, even if it\u2019s to their own detriment.<\/p>\n

It seems incomprehensible a four-time world champion would not demand to be the No.1, and even more so McLaren giving in to his demands. Especially given his teammate, presumably, would himself be a world champion.<\/p>\n

And even if hell did wake up chilly one morning and McLaren did cave to Max and demote Norris to No.2 status, would such an upheaval of its own values and principals yield better results than it\u2019s already achieving? It\u2019s difficult to say yes.<\/p>\n

Like Red Bull, McLaren has endured a difficult start to the season. Each driver has a second and a third place to their name, while Norris also led a McLaren 1-2 in the Miami sprint race.<\/p>\n

The team is third in the constructors\u2019 standings, a whopping 154 points adrift of Mercedes, and 78 behind Ferrari. Red Bull is 51 points behind.<\/p>\n

At the same point last season, McLaren were 197 points clear of Ferrari, and had won seven of the nine grands prix.<\/p>\n

It would make little sense for Piastri to leave McLaren. Despite their early season struggles, it\u2019s a team probably still on the up. There is stability within its senior personnel, and Verstappen\u2019s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase will also join the team<\/a> in 2028.<\/p>\n

Red Bull meanwhile has also lost Adrian Newey and Christian Horner<\/a> in the last two years, and are a team in crisis. There is also ongoing tension within Red Bull GmbH\u2019s owners over the management of the team.<\/p>\n

Having won all but one grand prix in 2023, the Milton Keynes squad just three years later is fighting to even break into the top-five.<\/p>\n

Based on that, McLaren are far more likely to sort their proverbial and once again become contenders. A move away from that, even into a team where Piastri would be the clear No.1, would be a dumb idea.<\/p>\n

\"Oscar<\/p>\n

Oscar Piastri and Mark Webber in 2025.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

But Mark Webber<\/a>, Piastri\u2019s manager, has proven before he can see opportunity where others cannot. He got Piastri out of his Alpine<\/a> contract \u2013 albeit aided by some sheer incompetence<\/a> \u2013 and he will know the details of the McLaren deal inside-out and back-to-front.<\/p>\n

And, he\u2019s still a popular figure among Red Bull GmbH executives. <\/p>\n

The F1<\/a> circus is in the middle of a sting of four races in five weekends in the lead up to the mid-season break.<\/p>\n

The season continues at the Belgian Grand Prix<\/a> at the famed Spa-Francorchamps circuit on July 19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oscar Piastri\u2019s management has denied reports the Aussie has activated a contract clause to leave McLaren at season\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-788739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788739","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=788739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}