Christian Horner hits back at ‘noise’ over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull future

Christian Horner has finally provided clarity on the rumors of Max Verstappen ditching Red Bull as early as the 2026 season.

Christian Horner hits back at ‘noise’ over Max Verstappen’s Red Bull future

Max Verstappen and Christian Horner (via Red Bull Content Pool)

Red Bull’s massive performance struggles of the 2024 season have seemed to creep up this year as well. The challenger is very inferior compared to the dominant pace of McLaren and Mercedes. Still, Max Verstappen has tried his level best to score impressive performances. However, due to the incessant problems, rumors have come up of the 27-year-old ditching Milton Keynes as early as the 2026 season. Upon this, Christian Horner has taken offense and responded sternly to the naysayers.

Max Verstappen‘s dominant performances in the 2024 season, despite driving an inferior chassis, caused multiple teams to gain even more interest in him. Toto Wolff‘s hopes of acquiring the Dutchman didn’t die down in spite of the latter clearly declining all contracts from Brackley. Moreover, Aston Martin came up with an unrivalled alleged offer of over $1 billion for the 27-year-old.

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Still, Verstappen has remained loyal to his seat at Red Bull and doesn’t plan to leave the team anytime soon. Multiple notable individuals had previously claimed that the Dutchman’s move to one of the rival teams in the 2026 season was already a done deal. Christian Horner finally broke his silence on the relentless rumors of the 27-year-old ditching the team as early as the next season.

Horner iterates that all the ‘noise’ of Verstappen’s switch in teams remains an alien concept for Red Bull. The team is unfazed by all the rumors and focuses on improving performances against the rivals. Moreover, the 51-year-old insists that the Dutchman is working hard with the engineers in the team and is pushing to find any possible improvements in the RB21.

The noise has been out there and not in here. Max is working very hard with the team.

Christian Horner told GPblog

Christian Horner asserts Max Verstappen working ‘incredibly hard’ to improve Red Bull

Max Verstappen has remained relentless in his efforts to find any grounds for improvement for Red Bull over the 2025 season. The reigning world champion had recently held a meeting with the engineers in Milton Keynes to discuss the shortcomings of the car. Moreover, the 27-year-old is performing extremely consistently and is trailing the drivers’ title lead by a deficit of just 12 points.

Max Verstappen and Gianpiero Lambiase (via Red Bull Content Pool)
Max Verstappen and Gianpiero Lambiase (via Red Bull Content Pool)

Christian Horner reassured that Verstappen’s current focus lay on Red Bull and not contractual situations of the 2026 season. The 51-year-old emphasizes that the Dutchman is working incredibly hard with the rest of the team to ultimately improve the car. Moreover, Horner motivated the four-time champion by claiming that the entire crew stood together as a team and shared their wins and even losses.

In addition to this, Horner highlighted that Red Bull’s primary focus was also to improve the RB21 chassis and not any other scenarios. It was recently rumored that Milton Keynes shifted all their focus to the 2025 season and not the regulation changes in the coming year. The Red Bull boss insists that the team is achieving great performance over the weekends and assures that ‘everything is at play’ for the Austrian team.

He’s stated once again that his focus is here. He’s working incredibly hard on this, together collectively with the rest of the team. We’re a team. We win together, we lose together. And that’s the way that we operate. Our focus is on sorting the car out, which we’ve had a decent Saturday and Sunday here and everything’s still in play.

Christian Horner noted

Red Bull must find massive improvements on the car in order to seriously compete for the constructors’ championship. At this rate, the team could be in for a rude awakening as they can lose the contention early on. McLaren and Mercedes seem to be the team to beat for Milton Keynes as they also move towards stability in their performances. Only time will tell about how the final year of the ground-effect era pans out for the team that has dominated the entirety of these regulations.