Max Verstappen and his father Jos sat down to dinner in Dubai last night with plenty to chew on.
The pair flew from Bahrain to the land of the skyscraper en route, in Max’s case, to Saturday’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and the next installment of Formula 1’s grizzliest soap opera, a blockbuster that refuses to die.
At the center of the plot is Christian Horner, the Red Bull team boss who sent suggestive text messages to a female colleague. Verstappen Snr wants the 50-year-old Englishman gone, a fact he expressed publicly for the first time in these pages yesterday.
In a strident mood he declared that the team, flush with the success of thirteen world championships in their nineteen years of colorful existence, would ‘explode’ unless Horner moved on. He accused him of playing the victim.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see the possible implications of a dispute over the city not being big enough for the two of them. That’s where Max, 26, and the greatest driver of his time, and possibly of all time, comes into the picture.
Controversial Red Bull team boss Christian Horner was joined in Bahrain by his wife Geri
Jos Verstappen (right) claims Red Bull will ‘explode’ if Horner remains as team boss
It raises questions about the future of Max Verstappen, who won in Bahrain
While Horner defiantly holds on to his £8million-a-year job, Max is Jos’s trump card in this high-stakes game. No team in the world would want to lose the services of a driver who even gilds the nonpareil car created by the greatest designer in the history of Formula 1, Adrian Newey.
Yes, perhaps several drivers currently on the grid could win a world championship with it, but none could dominate as easily or emphatically as the Dutch magician. Who else could have won all but three races last season? Or put together an unprecedented 10 straight wins? Or sharpen his elbows into razors in the heat of battle, when necessary?
Probably not even Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time world champion. For now and for the foreseeable future, Max is the best there is.
Jos, a former teammate at Benetton of Michael Schumacher, with whom the Verstappens went on holiday when Max was still a child, therefore has a powerful negotiating tool.
But, and here’s the fascinating mystery: what if Jos doesn’t get Horner’s head on a plate: would Max look elsewhere for a future job? Suspicion has already linked him to Mercedes. Hamilton will leave at the end of this year to join Ferrari for one last hurray and free up a seat there.
The fact that Jos dined with Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff last week ahead of the opening race in Bahrain adds to the rumor mill. It could have just been a meeting of old friends, as Jos claims, but it must be underlined: his relationship with Wolff deteriorated in 2021, with Max in hospital as Hamilton celebrated victory in the British Grand Prix after their meeting in Copse.
Things deteriorated further in the aftermath of the decider in Abu Dhabi, where Verstappen pipped his bitter rival to the title on the last lap after withdrawing the safety car on a night that will never be forgotten.
Mercedes’ Toto Wolff has stirred the pot since the scandal broke, calling for transparency
Even though relations have improved a lot since two years ago, it’s difficult to completely disrupt a Jos-Toto dinner from the fuss going on at Red Bull, even if the prospect of Max leaving his racing home – until now a well-oiled example of near-perfection – taking his chances with a Mercedes team far removed from his once dominant peak is somewhat remote for now. To underline this point, when Max won in Bahrain on Saturday, Mercedes’ George Russell was 47 seconds behind and Hamilton 50 seconds behind.
At this point, leaving for the Silver Arrows seems like a foolish venture, one that can only be welcomed with anger. It’s the nuclear option.
There’s also Max’s Red Bull contract which runs until 2028, although it’s suggested there are break clauses that could allow for a move in 2026.
Verstappen Snr, who turns 52 today, will not be in Jeddah this week, instead returning to Belgium for a rally. His absence from the Formula 1 paddock is undoubtedly a relief for him after the tense period in Bahrain, when the Red Bull hospitality unit was a seething theater of fake camaraderie. The warring parties looked into each other’s eyes and smiled. That could be because if their backs were turned, they wouldn’t see the daggers coming.
The most extravagant show of support came from Horner’s Spice Girl wife Geri. She walked with him into the paddock. They held hands and kissed. The famous couple is comforted by the belief that Horner is relatively safe unless new evidence or a leaked email with a new set of complaints surfaces.
Horner and his wife Geri (left) put on a public display of unity despite his texting scandal
Horner has declined to comment on possible motives of those responsible for the leaking of texts
One hope for Jos, who wanted Horner gone, was that the sport’s owners, Liberty Media in the guise of Formula One Management (FOM), and the regulators, the FIA, would intervene and investigate the claims themselves, or at least would least ask for the internal report carried out by a QC on behalf of Red Bull Racing’s parent company, Red Bull GmbH, in which he was acquitted last week. It seems unlikely that this will happen. The FIA, under president Mohammad Ben Sulayem, quietly sides with Horner. FOM is silent, bordering on publicly invisible.
Max’s views are not explicitly known. He is believed to generally support his father’s position. Tellingly, he refused four times to offer Horner unconditional support during press conferences last weekend.
He only explained that he thought his boss had done an excellent job performance-wise. There was an air of faint praise about his approval.
Red Bull issued a statement last night following Jos’ comments in Mail Sport, saying: ‘There are no issues here. The team is united and we are focused on racing.”
Which, even by the standards of recent days, takes some faith.