'Max wasn't born to be in the midfield' - did Austria buy Red Bull more time to keep Verstappen?

Second place on home soil, sandwiched between two Mercedes, was about as good a result as Red Bull could reasonably have hoped for from Max Verstappen‘s weekend at the Red Bull Ring.

Whether it was good enough to change the conversation about his future is a different question for now, but on the evidence of the past few days, the most accurate answer is that it helps, but it doesn’t settle anything.

As it’s well known, Verstappen’s contract runs to the end of 2028, but it contains a performance-related exit clause tied to where he sits in the championship around the time of the summer break.

The reporting is consistent that the trigger is being outside the top two in the standings; what’s less widely understood is that Verstappen reportedly doesn’t have to declare whether he’s activating it until October, even if the clause itself opens in August.

That’s relevant because it means Austria and the upcoming three races aren’t a deadline so much as a data point in a decision Verstappen can keep open for months.

Right now, seventh in the championship and well outside the top two, the clause is live.

Red Bull knows it, Verstappen’s camp knows it, and, going by his manager Raymond Vermeulen’s choice of words to the Dutch press, they’re not pretending otherwise.

“We feel at home at Red Bull, but we want to be competitive,” was the line ahead of the home race. “In the end, Max wasn’t born to race in the midfield.”

That’s leverage deployed in public, in the days before the team’s biggest upgrade of the season.

What Austria actually changed

Red Bull brought what was described as its largest upgrade package since Miami to Spielberg, aimed as much at resolving a long-standing weight problem as increasing outright downforce.

Second place, ahead of one Mercedes and only beaten by the other, is Red Bull’s best result of the season, and a genuinely encouraging return on that investment – though it’s a step up from a low base, not a sign the gap to the front had already been close.

Verstappen’s own post-race tone reflected the same caution: cautiously positive, while flagging that some of the new parts still need fine-tuning.

But it’s worth separating the upgrade’s effect from the result’s optics. Seventh in the championship after eight rounds is, by any measure, a poor season for a four-time champion.

Even allowing for misfortunes like his DNF at Monaco or the technical issues behind his qualifying crash in Austria, the more realistic read is that it’s still too early to judge whether the Red Bull Ring performance is Red Bull’s actual level.

Verstappen is 98 points behind in the championship, but did overturn a 104-point deficit to Oscar Piastri last season to finish second. Even so, he made the case for caution in Austria when asked directly about his title chances,.

“I think there are more races left than last year, but it’s a very big gap,” he said after the race on Sunday. “I think for us we had very good pace, but I think to fight for a title we need to be more all-around. I think we still have too many issues, if that’s from a start to just procedural issues in the background, that even I think you guys don’t know about, but I know about.

“I think we just need to be a little bit more all-around still.

“It’s not a big criticism or whatever. I think everyone is aware but we always want to be better, we chase to be the best. So, we just need to focus on all of those things. And then, yes, if we are a bit more, let’s say, rock solid, and we’ve shown that in the past, then of course it’s a different story. But hopefully it doesn’t take too long. We have still a little bit of work to do.”

That sounds like Verstappen drawing a line between the pace in Austria and the consistency that turns occasional good Sundays into a title campaign.

The McLaren noise

Running alongside all of this has been a genuinely awkward subplot for Red Bull: persistent reporting of informal Verstappen-McLaren talks, with some versions of the story involving an Oscar Piastri swap.

Verstappen’s own response, when asked directly, was to wave it off as the inevitable background noise of the social media age: “These days it’s all very easy. With AI, you can Photoshop anything you want.”

Red Bull’s side of it, Vermeulen telling Bild there were “no negotiations”, is the standard denial, notable mainly for what it didn’t say. Pressed on whether Verstappen will definitely be at Red Bull in 2027, Vermeulen stopped short of a yes.

Which is what made Zak Brown’s answer, when Sky Sports raised the rumours with him, worth a feature in its own right.

Asked about Verstappen potentially arriving at Woking, Brown didn’t deny it so much as wrap a non-denial in a joke: “I’d be very surprised if Lando or Oscar went elsewhere because they’re very happy. You know, of course, we’ve got contracts but contracts aside, we’re very happy with them, they’re very happy here.

“If for some strange reason, someone slipped on a banana peel getting out of the tub, then yeah, of course, Max is a four-time world champion.”

There is no real reason to believe McLaren’s current drivers might leave, even if Brown is making sure everyone in the paddock knows that if a seat ever opened up, McLaren’s answer about Verstappen would not be no.

It’s also a useful tell on the broader market.

With Mercedes’ line-up for 2027 locked — George Russell has stated flatly he’ll be there — and Ferrari‘s seats occupied for the next years, McLaren is one of the only plausible top-team destinations left if Verstappen does walk.

As usual, Brown knows what he’s doing: he is keeping a door very visibly ajar, at minimal cost, while Red Bull does the work of trying to keep it shut.

So does Austria change anything?

The Red Bull Ring performance should buy the team goodwill even if not certainty.