The reigning Formula One world champion is sticking it out with Red Bull.<\/p>\n
Max Verstappen will remain with his lifelong team through the 2026 season after clearing an exit clause following the Belgian Grand Prix, ESPN’s Nate Saunders reported Monday.<\/p>\n
Rumours of the four-time reigning champ potentially leaving Red Bull had grown recently, as Mercedes boss Toto Wolff confirmed his team’s interest in signing the Dutch superstar. <\/p>\n
Though he’s under contract until 2028, a clause in Verstappen’s contract allowed him to opt out of the deal should he sit in fourth or worse in the drivers’ championship as F1 heads into the summer break. <\/p>\n
However, Verstappen is currently sitting in third at 185 points, and it’s mathematically impossible for fourth-place driver George Russell (157 points) to catch him before the Hungarian Grand Prix in August \u2014 the last race before the break. <\/p>\n
Red Bull has had a share of drama this season, with the team’s car a step below that of McLaren’s \u2014 Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, the two McLaren drivers, hold the top two spots in the drivers’ championship \u2014 and their sacking of long-time team principal Christian Horner earlier in July.<\/p>\n
Verstappen did mention that he doubted the decision to fire Horner would impact his future with the team.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old has been part of Red Bull’s system for the entirety of his F1 career, debuting with the team as a 17-year-old with Toro Rosso in 2015. He moved over to the Red Bull Racing side in 2016 and won his first driver’s championship in 2021, edging out Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The reigning Formula One world champion is sticking it out with Red Bull. Max Verstappen will remain with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[1687,372,6537,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-29136","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}