Max Verstappen was never going to enjoy a typical Formula 1 career.
We knew that much when he debuted aged 17 — before gaining his driver’s license — as the youngest driver in F1 history. Just over a year later, he set a record as the youngest race winner at the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix, his debut for Red Bull.
A first world championship by 24. Four by 27. Now 28, he has 71 race wins, only trailing Lewis Hamilton (105) and Michael Schumacher (91) on the all-time list.
But Verstappen’s career has never been about records. His view is that he reached the summit in 2021 with that first title. With the ultimate goal achieved, everything afterward took on a different perspective.
Enjoyment on the track and the importance of life away from F1 have become growing priorities.
It’s therefore little surprise that, in the wake of his worst start to an F1 season since his debut in 2015, and with deep-rooted frustrations about the sport’s new generation of engine battery-focused cars introduced this year, Verstappen is thinking of walking away from it all — before turning 30.
Explicit confirmation of Verstappen’s thinking arrived on Sunday in a radio interview with BBC Sport after the 2026 Japanese GP, where he’d crossed the line a disappointing eighth. “You just think about, ‘is it worth it?’” Verstappen said. “Or do I enjoy being more at home with my family? Seeing my friends more when you’re not enjoying your sport?”
Verstappen would hardly be the first big-name athlete to call it quits while in their prime. But for F1 to lose one of its greatest talents and biggest names, especially over the direction it has taken with its racing product, would be a blow to the sport.
The coming weeks and months will be decisive for Verstappen’s F1 future. And there won’t be one single factor that defines whether he stays or goes.
The new engine era factor
Through all the criticism that has been laid against F1’s new 2026 cars, and their emphasis on engine electrical power and engine software instead of drivers pushing flat out, Verstappen’s voice has cut through the most.
Verstappen skewered the new cars at the earliest opportunity — the first open preseason test. He called them “anti-racing” and “not a lot of fun” to drive. Despite the good some drivers have seen in the overhauled car designs, particularly in the way drivers can go wheel-to-wheel, Verstappen has stuck by his view.
What has likely made this all the more galling for Verstappen is that he was the first driver to seriously question F1’s anticipated direction for the 2026 cars.
Max Verstappen (center) at the 2023 Austrian GP, where he first warned about the cars being developed for F1 2026 (Lars Baron / Getty Images)
Back in July 2023, he revealed early simulations of Red Bull’s 2026 models looked “pretty terrible.” He predicted drivers may need to pull drastic tricks to keep the engines topped up with electric energy, such as downshifting on long straights. This has already been seen in practice this year.
Verstappen is an out-and-out racer. He’s perhaps as close as it comes to what one may define as a ‘purist’ on the F1 grid. To him, motorsport is about going flat out and full send at every possible opportunity. Being on the very limit — that’s what thrills him.
So far, the new era of F1 hasn’t been that. Now the engines place such an emphasis on electrical power, the quickest way around a lap is often to go slower through corners to recharge the battery and then deploy that extra boost on subsequent straights.
Verstappen is hardly alone in calling out the issues with these new cars. World champions Fernando Alonso and Lando Norris have also aired their concerns, with Alonso calling F1 2026 a “battery world championship.”
As a four-time world champion, Verstappen’s voice matters. After his initial criticism in testing, F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali sought out the Dutchman for talks to understand his position. Whether that helps enact some change via rule tweaks to the existing engine technology is less clear.
But not all drivers have been so critical, and it may be that even with some changes, the cars still aren’t to Verstappen’s liking.
But would a quicker, more successful car be the remedy?
The contract factor
To some it will seem like sour grapes for Verstappen to now become so critical of F1, as he’s experiencing a sharp downturn in results after four straight world titles and a near-miss on another in 2025. His best finish in the first three races is sixth (in Australia).
Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team principal, said in China that Verstappen’s “horror show” of a car was likely not helping his outlook at the moment.
Yet Verstappen has maintained that his results have nothing to do with his views. “It’s not about being upset about where I am,” he said after the Chinese GP.
He’s never obsessed over being a serial winner; instead, he simply wants to enjoy his racing and the experience of working with his team. If the former gets chipped away, it’s unlikely any amount of winning can entirely make up for that.
But it would surely be slightly easier for Verstappen to stomach if he were fighting at the very front. His hunger for success has never diminished, knowing how much it means to everyone on his Red Bull team and what a special thing it is to win altogether.
Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies emphasized the need for Red Bull to lift its performance after the Suzuka race to help ease Verstappen’s concerns. “We have a lot of work to do,” he said. “I’m sure by the time we give him a fast car, he will be a much happier Max.”
Max Verstappen after the 2026 Japanese GP (Mark Thompson / Getty Images)
There would be a contractual impact if Red Bull cannot find its form fast, given Verstappen has a clause that would allow him to walk away at the end of the year if he’s outside of the top two in the championship at a point in the summer (most likely the August summer break).
That said, the relationship between both sides has always been so transparent and strong that it’s unlikely either side would want to continue if they weren’t happy doing so. Because being part of Red Bull has always meant — and still means — an enormous amount to Verstappen.
It’s all he has known in F1, initially racing for its junior team, Toro Rosso (these days known as Racing Bulls), before joining its senior squad and defining its recent streak of F1 success.
In an interview with The Times last month, Verstappen revealed he’d told Red Bull’s late founder, Dietrich Mateschitz, that he planned to see out his career at Red Bull. Although a lot has changed at the team in the past year, including the exit of advisor Helmut Marko, a key figure to Verstappen, he continues to love working with the team.
But being happy in his environment can only go so far. If Verstappen is still not having fun driving these cars, and if there’s no sign of change or success on the horizon, he’s unlikely to be inclined to stick around and just wait it out.
The outside factors
There’s too much else in Verstappen’s life that does give him the kind of joy that F1 doesn’t appear to right now.
That’s even on the race track. Last year, Verstappen stepped into competition outside F1 by entering his first sports car events, racing a GT3 (a specification of a grand tourer) car with his own team on the Nürburgring’s iconic Nordschleife in Germany.
He’s already entered one race this year — which he won before a tire rule breach meant the car was disqualified — and in May, he’ll take part in the iconic 24 Hours of Nürburgring. The famous Le Mans 24 Hours sports car endurance race is also on his radar for the future.
These events give Verstappen his thrills in a way that F1 does not right now. He didn’t want to make direct comparisons when speaking last week in Japan, but admitted the sports car outings were “something that I enjoy a lot. Every time I jumped out of the car, I was smiling.”
Life away from F1 also matters deeply to Verstappen. His partner, Kelly Piquet, gave birth to their first child, Lily, last year, while Piquet also has a young daughter from a previous relationship, making them a family of four. Verstappen’s closeness to his father, Jos, is proof of how important those familial bonds are to him.
And through Verstappen’s F1 career, the sport has placed increasing demands on him, with an expanding calendar that has led to much more time away from home. The 2015 calendar length was 19 races, in a normal year, F1 now holds 24 events (it is 22 in 2026 due to the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian GPs).
Long-term questions about F1 were there for Verstappen even at the very height of his success. At the start of 2024, he said F1 was “way over the limit for races” with a 24-round schedule. His words then aren’t a million miles away from what he said in Japan last week.
Max Verstappen in action during the 2026 Japanese GP (Clive Mason / Getty Images)
“I know I’m still very young, but I also know that I’m not doing this for another 10 years,” Verstappen said at the Bahrain test in 2024, then aged 26. “I love racing a lot and I do it a lot, also outside of F1. But at one point you start looking into the quality of life and how much you are away doing a sport that you love.
“At one point, I’ll probably prefer to just be at home and focus on other projects.”
Another prophetic comment from Verstappen came a year earlier. Following his first title win in 2021, he’d tied himself to Red Bull until 2028 with a huge contract extension. By 2023, he’d already suggested that he may not look to sign another F1 contract, and that 2028 could be a good cut-off point for him overall.
“I know that I will be 31 when it’s the end of my contract,” Verstappen told Sky Sports. “At that point, I will have been in F1 for a very long time.”
If Verstappen did hang up his F1 helmet — for now, at least — at the end of this year, he’d reach 250 grand prix entries. That’s a tally only 13 drivers to date have reached in F1 history when he’d be a couple of months past his 29th birthday.
An 11-season career and success far beyond his wildest dreams is already enough for him. It’s not about money for Verstappen, or racing deep into his 30s or, like Alonso or Hamilton, his 40s. It’s about fulfillment.
And if F1 were to change course, going back toward a style of car that was to Verstappen’s liking with the next generation of car design, one that provides him the satisfaction there was prior to 2026, he’d surely leap at a return.
The five-week gap until the next race in Miami will be important for this topic. F1’s bosses will come together to evaluate potential tweaks to the new regulations, with Verstappen’s statements inevitably provoking some of the discussions.
But Verstappen himself will also be able to take time at home to figure out what he wants from his immediate future, and where F1 really fits in.
