Matt Bishop: Obvious deadline for Max to decide F1 future is looming

Yes, in February last year he found himself at the centre of a sexting scandal, although a private investigation commissioned by the Red Bull F1 team’s parent company (Red Bull GmbH) and conducted by an external KC (King’s Counsel) concluded: “The independent investigation into the allegations made against Mr Horner is complete, and Red Bull can confirm that the grievance [made by the female employee concerned] has been dismissed. Red Bull is confident that the investigation has been fair, rigorous, and impartial.” The woman who had made the complaint about Horner’s behaviour then appealed the above decision, but her appeal was dismissed. Nonetheless, mud usually sticks, and in Horner’s case some mud duly stuck, especially in the form of social media scuttlebutt.

Yes, it is common knowledge that Jos Verstappen, Max’s father, is not a Horner fan, and indeed in March last year he said, “The [Red Bull] team is in danger of being torn apart. It can’t go on the way it is. It will explode. He [Horner] is playing the victim, when he’s the one causing the problems.”

Yes, Red Bull has recently suffered a significant senior technical and operational brain drain – Adrian Newey to Aston Martin, Rob Marshall to McLaren, Jonathan Wheatley to Audi, and others besides – and Horner has not hired people of equivalent stature by way of replacements.

Yes, Horner re-signed Checo Pérez for 2024 despite the Mexican veteran’s slightly iffy 2023 form – a decision that was criticised by F1 insiders, journalists, and fans alike. Pérez then failed to win a single grand prix in 2024, finishing only eighth in that year’s F1 drivers’ world championship, while Verstappen won nine grands prix and became F1 drivers’ world champion for the fourth consecutive season.

Yes, Horner’s next driver selection could be described as eccentric at best and obtuse at worst, for he hired a near novice, Liam Lawson, for 2025, despite most pundits advising him that the youngster would sink rather than swim, then he demoted him to the Red Bull B-team, Racing Bulls, after just two grands prix.

Over the past couple of seasons Max’s genius has been flattering the quality of his cars

Yes, the 2025 F1 season is shaping up to be Red Bull’s least successful for some time, since McLaren will almost certainly win the F1 constructors’ world championship and either Oscar Piastri or Lando Norris will almost certainly win the F1 drivers’ world championship. As the man in charge of the Red Bull team for the past 20 years, Horner sits squarely behind the desk on which the buck stops when it comes to apportioning blame for on-track underperformance.

However, in his defence, and heftily counterbalancing the tale of woe catalogued in the six paragraphs above, since he took over the leadership of the Red Bull team in 2005, it has racked up 124 F1 grand prix wins, 107 F1 pole positions, 100 F1 fastest laps, eight F1 drivers’ world championships, and six F1 constructors’ world championships, which colossal tally makes him one of the most successful team principals in F1 history.

Nonetheless, those heady days appear to have gone for the moment, for no driver other than Verstappen could have won the 2024 F1 drivers’ world championship in the Red Bull RB20, and no driver other than Verstappen could have won two 2025 F1 grands prix (and counting) in the Red Bull RB21. In other words, although what we are now seeing is not the first occurrence of a fantastically gifted F1 driver lording it over his team-mates with metronomic and mesmerising authority, it may be the most pronounced instance of that phenomenon for a generation, and it is clear that over the past couple of seasons Max’s genius has been flattering the quality of his cars.

Yes, Michael Schumacher usually outclassed all his team-mates. Yes, so – often – did Ayrton Senna. Yes, so – sometimes – did Nelson Piquet. Yes, so – in a glorious spell of brilliance in 1976 and 1977 – did James Hunt. Yes, so – in 1972 – did Emerson Fittipaldi. Yes, so – always – did Jim Clark. There are other examples that I could cite, but F1 is more commercially cut-throat now than it was then, and the head honchos of Red Bull GmbH are used to winning and they are not prepared to put up with not winning. I have often opined that the best measure of the speed of an F1 car is the performance that the number-two driver is achieving with it. On that basis, the RB20 was mediocre and the RB21 is downright lousy. In Red Bull’s corridors of power in Salzburg, that reality is simply not acceptable.

The weekend before last, at Silverstone, Horner’s final grand prix as Red Bull’s team principal, he was asked in a press conference whether he feared losing Verstappen, and he replied with the following highly significant remark: “I remember Dietrich [Mateschitz, the Red Bull owner and patriarch who died in October 2022] telling me at the time [when four-time F1 drivers’ world champion Sebastian Vettel had decided to leave Red Bull to join Ferrari at the end of the 2014 season], ‘We don’t need the best driver if we don’t have the best car.’”

But there is another way of looking at that situation, and, personally, I would subscribe to that other way. I would put it like this: if you no longer have the best car, the only way of achieving respectable results is to cling to the best driver for dear life. What is more, I have it on good authority that Oliver Mintzlaff, managing director of Red Bull GmbH, and Helmut Marko, Red Bull’s F1 ‘adviser’ (my inverted commas, because Marko’s job title grossly underplays the power and influence of his position), who were effectively Horner’s bosses, view things my way. As a result, seeing Toto Wolff moving heaven and earth in his efforts to lure Verstappen away from Red Bull to join Mercedes, and hearing Max refuse to rule out such a move when asked about it by journalists, they determined to do whatever was necessary to find a way to persuade their unsettled superstar to reject Wolff’s bounties and blandishments. If that meant jettisoning Horner, so be it.

Will their strategy work? Who knows? Right now, probably only Verstappen does. So let’s put it this way. There are two grands prix between now and the commencement of the F1 summer shutdown, at Spa and Hungaroring, after which the F1 season will resume at Zandvoort, Max’s home race. One would imagine that he would want his 2026 plans to be signed, sealed, delivered, and announced by the time he next races in front of his adoring orange army, which in practice means that he needs to have everything sorted by the end of this month. So time is of the essence, and we will probably see white smoke, to borrow a bit of papal terminology, in weeks rather than months.

Whatever the world’s fastest and most famous flying Dutchman chooses to do, make no mistake: it will be his choice and no-one else’s. Rarely has an F1 driver been so unequivocally the master of his own destiny as is Max Emilian Verstappen right now.