The Ultimate Power Play: Inside Red Bull’s Radical Formula 1 Blueprint to Keep Max Verstappen
In the high-stakes, hyper-competitive world of Formula 1, the battle for supremacy is rarely confined strictly to the physical race track. The sprawling paddocks, the tinted motorhomes, and the heavily guarded corporate boardrooms are where the true, defining wars of the sport are routinely waged. And as the 2026 season hurtles toward the Austrian Grand Prix, a completely wild, unprecedented rumour has begun to echo through the garage lanes—a rumour so audacious that it threatens to entirely rewrite the fundamental rules of driver contracts and team ownership. Red Bull Racing, the dominant force of the modern era, might have just devised a secret, shocking master plan to ensure Max Verstappen never leaves their stable. And the most astonishing twist of all? It has absolutely nothing to do with offering him a more lucrative financial salary.
To fully understand the monumental scale of this developing situation, one must first look at the concrete facts that have actively triggered this wave of intense speculation. Shortly before the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona, an incredibly significant meeting took place. Max Verstappen, accompanied by his long-time manager Raymond Vermeulen, flew directly to Red Bull’s global headquarters located in Salzburg, Austria. On the surface, a star driver meeting with his corporate bosses is standard operating procedure in Formula 1. However, according to multiple, highly credible reports leaking from the paddock, this was not a routine catch-up to politely discuss contract extensions or marketing obligations. The discussions reportedly centred around something infinitely larger and far more complex: the outright ownership structure of Red Bull’s two distinct Formula 1 teams.
That specific phrase—”two teams”—is the absolute golden key that unlocks this entire complex narrative. The overarching Red Bull parent company does not merely own the championship-winning Red Bull Racing outfit. They also retain full ownership of the sister team, officially known as the Racing Bulls, the very same Faenza-based squad that long-time fans lovingly remember as Toro Rosso. It is a brilliant, almost poetic full-circle moment when you recall that this is the exact same team where a teenage Max Verstappen was sensationally handed his Formula 1 debut all the way back in 2015.
While owning two separate teams on the same grid has been a legally permissible setup for many years, acting as a crucial talent incubator for the Red Bull driver academy, the landscape of the sport is drastically shifting. In 2026, this dual-ownership structure is suddenly finding itself under intense, sustained fire from rival competitors. The man enthusiastically lighting the match and leading the charge is none other than the outspoken Chief Executive Officer of McLaren Racing, Zak Brown.
For several years, Zak Brown has been on a relentless, vocal mission against what he derisively categorises as “A/B teams”—a scenario where one overarching corporate entity effectively pulls the strings of two separate racing outfits competing on the exact same grid. This season, however, Brown has officially stopped dropping subtle hints in press conferences and has formally escalated the warfare. He has fired off a strongly worded, official letter straight to the President of the FIA, Mohammed Ben Sulayem, aggressively demanding the implementation of significantly tighter regulations regarding dual team ownership.
And in the interest of absolute fairness, Brown’s receipts are incredibly compelling. To build his legal and moral case, he routinely points to highly controversial incidents, most notably the Singapore Grand Prix of 2024. During the dying moments of that exceptionally tense race, the Racing Bulls team uncharacteristically called Daniel Ricciardo into the pits for a fresh set of soft tyres on the very last lap. His sole objective was to snatch the fastest lap point away from McLaren’s Lando Norris. That singular championship point—surprise, surprise—ultimately aided Max Verstappen in his own intense title fight against the McLaren driver. Furthermore, Brown frequently highlights the highly unusual management pipeline that sees executives seamlessly transition between the two squads, such as Laurent Mekies aggressively jumping straight from the Racing Bulls structure into the Red Bull team principal seat.
Zak Brown’s central analogy is both brutal and incredibly persuasive. He asks the governing body to vividly imagine a professional football league where one wealthy ownership group controls two separate clubs playing in the same division. If one of those clubs can actively afford to deliberately lose a match or sacrifice their own strategic positioning to ensure the other club secures the championship, the entire foundational integrity of the sporting competition is completely compromised. That is the massive, existential risk that Brown argues currently threatens the future of Formula 1. Red Bull, naturally, has pushed back against these severe allegations, with Mekies openly stating that they are actively willing to take the necessary steps to keep the rest of the grid satisfied. However, the bitter political fight is very much ongoing and shows absolutely no signs of slowing down.
This intensely hostile political climate is precisely where the sensational new theory enters the fray. The highly respected Formula 1 journalist Joe Saward, a veteran of the paddock with deep, historical connections, recently published a newsletter that sent absolute shockwaves through the motorsport community. In his widely read publication, ‘The Business of Motorsport’, Saward elegantly laid out a complex theory that had been quietly, nervously circulating among team principals and driver managers. The jaw-dropping concept is this: Red Bull could potentially hand Max Verstappen a massive, controlling ownership stake in the Racing Bulls team.
Take a moment to sit back and truly comprehend the sheer, staggering cleverness of that potential manoeuvre. If Max Verstappen—acting independently as an individual driver and a private businessman, rather than acting on behalf of the Red Bull parent company—officially controls the sister team, then technically and legally, Red Bull no longer possesses two teams on the Formula 1 grid. In one fell swoop, the massive corporate headache completely vanishes. Zak Brown’s entire, meticulously constructed argument regarding the inherent unfairness of dual-corporate ownership would instantly go up in smoke, entirely neutralised by an unprecedented legal loophole.
But herein lies the massive, glaring caveat that many enthusiastic supporters of this theory are currently, conveniently skipping over: absolutely nobody in the paddock actually knows if such an arrangement would even be remotely legal under the current sporting regulations.
FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem has already publicly confirmed that the governing body is actively looking into the complex nuances of dual ownership. However, handing the keys of a Formula 1 team over to an active driver who is currently racing for a direct rival team creates a legal and ethical minefield of catastrophic proportions. Plenty of seasoned legal experts within the sport vehemently argue that there is simply no way the FIA would ever allow an active driver to personally own a massive piece of one racing team while competitively driving the primary car for another. Think critically about the implications; that unique scenario might arguably represent an even larger, more dangerous conflict of interest than the original corporate ownership structure they are desperately trying to fix.
Even Joe Saward himself, the man who bravely brought this incredible theory into the public consciousness, openly categorises the whole idea as highly unlikely to actually materialise. Instead, Saward genuinely expects Verstappen to stay exactly where he is, fulfilling his current obligations at Red Bull Racing until at least the conclusion of the 2027 season. And there is a highly specific, intricate detail that makes that exact timeline incredibly plausible. The end of the 2027 season is precisely when Max Verstappen’s famously intense, long-time race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, officially finishes his current Red Bull contract. The paddock is already buzzing with the confirmed knowledge that Lambiase is subsequently heading straight to rival McLaren the following year. Losing the man who has calmly guided him to multiple world championships could be the exact catalyst that finally prompts Verstappen to evaluate his own long-term future within the sport.
Therefore, we must be absolutely clear about what this current situation represents: it is high-level paddock speculation, not a formally signed and sealed contract. But what makes this entire saga so profoundly interesting is not necessarily whether the ownership transfer actually happens. Instead, it is what the mere existence of these high-level discussions reveals about where Max Verstappen’s mindset currently sits.
If you analyse his recent public statements and his quiet, behind-the-scenes business moves, a remarkably clear picture begins to emerge. Verstappen has flat-out stated on numerous occasions that he harbours absolutely zero desire to continue racing in Formula 1 into his late thirties. Unlike Fernando Alonso or Lewis Hamilton, who seem determined to push the absolute boundaries of athletic longevity, Verstappen appears fully prepared to walk away from the grid while still in his absolute prime. More importantly, he is already aggressively building his own vast, multifaceted motorsport empire completely outside of the traditional Red Bull corporate umbrella.
He currently operates the highly successful ‘Verstappen.com’ professional sim racing team, dominating the digital tracks with the same ruthless efficiency he applies to the real ones. Even more significantly, he actively owns a competitive GT3 racing squad. And here is the truly fascinating detail: his GT3 squad actually officially partners with Mercedes AMG Motorsport. Yes, the exact same Mercedes organisation that operates as Red Bull’s bitterest historical rival. The reigning world champion is already meticulously transforming himself from a mere employee into a powerful team owner right in front of our very eyes, laying down the structural foundation for his inevitable post-driving career.
When you look at the situation through that specific, entrepreneurial lens, the concept of Red Bull handing Max Verstappen the keys to an actual Formula 1 team is not quite as crazy as it initially sounds. It would effectively chain his long-term future to the Red Bull family in a profound, unbreakable way that no normal financial contract ever possibly could. It appeals directly to his stated ambitions of team management and gives him the ultimate plaything for his retirement from active driving.
The only remaining question—and it is a multi-million dollar question at that—is whether the rigid, highly bureaucratic structures of the FIA would ever actually permit such a paradigm-shifting move. The governing body is historically terrified of setting dangerous precedents, and allowing an active driver to own a sister team would undoubtedly open a Pandora’s Box of regulatory nightmares that would take decades to properly sort out.
The sheer timing of these escalating rumours is pure, unadulterated cinematic drama. You simply could not write a better script. The very next race on the busy Formula 1 calendar is the Austrian Grand Prix, scheduled for June 28th. This is Red Bull’s absolute home territory, the track physically owned by the company and surrounded by tens of thousands of fanatical Dutch supporters draped entirely in orange. It is also the exact same challenging circuit where Max Verstappen uncharacteristically crashed out on the very first lap during last year’s chaotic race. You can safely bet your bottom dollar that he is arriving in Spielberg with a massive point to prove and a burning desire to firmly re-establish his absolute dominance.
So, as the European leg of the season heats up, let us bring the entire complex picture into crystal clear focus. We have the concrete facts: a highly secretive, high-level meeting in Salzburg, an aggressive, formal legal complaint from McLaren to the FIA, and a governing body that is now actively, uncomfortably digging into the messy realities of dual team ownership. And then we have the wild, spectacular speculation: an unprecedented ownership shuffle that might not even be legally permissible in the first place, designed entirely to circumvent the rules and secure the greatest driver of his generation.
Whatever the ultimate truth may be, one specific thing is absolutely, unequivocally crystal clear. Red Bull is desperately pulling out every single conceivable option they possess to aggressively hold on to their crown jewel. They know that replacing a generational talent like Verstappen is fundamentally impossible. Meanwhile, Max Verstappen himself is no longer just thinking like a racing driver who merely wants to win the next Grand Prix. He is visibly starting to think, act, and negotiate like a man who ultimately wants to own the entire sport.
Whether this thrilling political saga concludes with him physically holding the ownership keys to the Racing Bulls facility in Faenza, or whether he is simply utilising all of this immense media leverage to eventually get exactly what he desires somewhere else, this is undeniably the biggest off-track story of the year. The traditional power dynamics of Formula 1 are shifting beneath our feet, and the Austrian Grand Prix in just ten days’ time will serve as the spectacular backdrop for the next explosive chapter. The engines might currently be silent, but the race for the absolute future of Formula 1 is already running at maximum throttle. And trust me, this one is far, far from over.
