Will Verstappen leave next? Horner exit doesn't settle Red Bull fear

“Max is a key part of our team and has been for pretty much ten years now,” Horner said. “The intention is to keep that going. But one day, whether it’s the year after or the year after, there will be a day that there is no more Max.

“You always have to have that in mind, that the team always has to keep looking and investing in the future. Hopefully that won’t be for several years to come, but you never know.

“So, you’re always investing in young talent, you’re always giving opportunities like we did [at Silverstone] with Arvid Lindblad, to see the next generation coming through. Because one thing for sure in this business, nothing stands still.”

Prescient words looking back on them, at a time when Horner even tried to highlight the past viewpoints of the late Dietrich Mateschitz to back-up his comments. Perhaps a little reminder of not only how the team came into existence, but came to be so successful over the past two decades.

“I remember Dietrich Mateschitz telling me at the time [Sebastian Vettel left in 2014], ‘we don’t need the best driver if we don’t have the best car’. At that stage, it was about building a team.

“Things go in cycles and sport goes in cycles. We’ve had two incredibly successful cycles in Formula 1, and what we want to do is build towards the next cycle. Now, of course, we want that to be with Max, but we understand the pressure that there is next year, with us coming in as a new power unit manufacturer.

“The challenge of that is enormous. But we’ve got a hugely capable group of people. We’ve invested significantly. We’ve got a great culture within the team. Who knows? To expect us to be ahead of Mercedes next year is… It would be embarrassing for Mercedes if we were, or for any manufacturer. But I think we’re going to be in a competitive position, potentially even to where we are today relative to our other PU manufacturers.

“There’s everything to play for. What’s great is having it all under one roof, chassis engineers sitting next to engine engineers. That shouldn’t be underestimated when you’re talking about the packaging.

“When you’ve got the ability to have those groups communicating and talking with each other directly over a cup of coffee and within the same facility, that is priceless, and that will pay dividends. Maybe it won’t be in ’26, but ’27, ’28, and beyond, long term for Red Bull, 100% it is the right thing.”

But it won’t be Horner leading the team long term, with Laurent Mekies now handed that task. So was that originally-expected question surrounding Verstappen’s future at the heart of it?

It’s tough to believe it didn’t play at least some sort of part, with Verstappen by far the strongest single component of the Red Bull set-up this year. There are still a huge amount of talented people at the team, but Verstappen has taken a car that has scored just seven points through 12 races on one side of the garage – via a combination of Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda – and picked up 165 all on his own.

Or put another way, with the rate of scoring seen so far, in a hypothetical world where the line-up was Lawson and Tsunoda, Red Bull would likely be bottom of the constructors’ championship.

Perhaps it was Mateschitz’s death in 2022 that was the true catalyst for the future change, but in late 2023 Verstappen was keen to point out how important it was that everyone stayed in their positions to continue the team’s run of success.

At the time Red Bull was dominant, but a year later the Dutchman was fighting to get a fourth world championship over the line in the knowledge that Adrian Newey, Jonathan Wheatley and Will Courtenay were all leaving, and Rob Marshall had already gone.

Horner downplayed the departures so often, but they are big losses, and the trend has been in the wrong direction for some time. It’s hard to imagine Verstappen’s thoughts about his future do not take that into account to a serious degree.

If he had doubts that the team would turn things around quickly enough, then a change at the very top is a signal of intent from Red Bull GmbH that it shares Verstappen’s frustrations.

It’s a clear message that it wants Verstappen to stay, but you don’t need me to tell you that F1 is a sport with long lead times. As big as the news is, Horner leaving and Mekies coming in does not change the picture for the team’s short-term prospects overnight.

The threat that Verstappen could leave may well have been real prior to Horner’s departure, and so it will remain that way if the defending champion sees a far more competitive seat opening up in an environment he’d be happy in.