{"id":858974,"date":"2026-08-15T11:42:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T11:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/858974\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T11:42:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T11:42:12","slug":"mercedes-no-longer-needs-max-verstappen-says-guenther-steiner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/858974\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercedes no longer needs Max Verstappen, says Guenther Steiner"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Haas Formula 1 team principal Guenther Steiner believes Mercedes’ need to sign Max Verstappen<\/a> has faded, suggesting the Brackley outfit has already found “the next Max Verstappen” in Kimi Antonelli.<\/p>\n

Verstappen’s F1 future has been the subject of paddock rumours for some time, particularly with Red Bull struggling to keep up with Mercedes<\/a> at the front of the grid in 2026. The Dutchman has been linked to the Toto Wolff-led team and, more recently,\u00a0McLaren<\/a>.<\/p>\n

During an interview on the Up To Speed podcast<\/a> with former driver David Coulthard<\/a> and content creator Jolie Sharpe, Steiner discussed the realistic options available to Verstappen if he decides to leave the Milton Keynes squad.<\/p>\n

“What I think the problem for Max at the moment is if you would have asked me three or four days ago, I would say going to\u00a0McLaren is a sideways move, after [the Hungarian Grand Prix], maybe it isn’t a sideways move, but things changed since then,” Steiner explained.<\/p>\n

“If Max goes somewhere, obviously he wants to go somewhere which is better than Red Bull, and there are not many teams around better than Red Bull.<\/p>\n

“Maybe Red Bull at the moment is not where they want to be, at the forefront like they were a few years ago, but it’s still one of the big four good teams. The seats are filled at Ferrari<\/a>. At Mercedes, I think they’ve now found the next Max Verstappen. So, maybe they don’t need the real Max Verstappen at the moment.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Andrea <\/p>\n

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing<\/p>\n

Photo by: Mark Thompson \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

Steiner argued that Red Bull still has one advantage over McLaren as it has its own power unit, whereas the Woking outfit is a customer team of Mercedes.<\/p>\n

“Then there was\u00a0McLaren, but McLaren until a few races ago, it’s like, are they really better than Red Bull? Because I think Red Bull has got one advantage. They’ve got their own engine now, which is an advantage.<\/p>\n

“If you have got the works engine, I mean McLaren is doing very well having a Mercedes customer engine. But in the end, [McLaren] would be the only possibility [for Verstappen], and I don’t know if that possibility even exists.<\/p>\n

“There was the rumour that maybe Oscar could go to Red Bull, but I think that is the biggest thing for Max: if Max goes somewhere, he wants to go to the best team around.”<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Haas Formula 1 team principal Guenther Steiner believes Mercedes’ need to sign Max Verstappen has faded, suggesting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":858975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,48037,578,576,577,1885,298842,2190,280810,82,4962,59857],"class_list":["post-858974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dutch-gp","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-max-verstappen","tag-mercedes-no-longer-needs-max-verstappen","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-says-guenther-steiner","tag-sports","tag-trendingteam","tag-zandvoort"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=858974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/858975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=858974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=858974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=858974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}