2 weeks Ago By Oliver Harden
Max Verstappen’s could trigger an exit clause in his Red Bull contract for F1 2026 if he is lower than third in the Drivers’ Championship “after a significant part” of next season, it has been claimed. It comes after Christian Horner, the Red Bull team principal, told media including PlanetF1.com that Verstappen ‘s contract contains “a performance element.
” Despite holding a contract until the end of the F1 2028 season, Verstappen has been linked with a move away from Red Bull throughout F1 2024 due to the team’s waning on-track performance and the tension between his father Jos and Horner. Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team boss, made no secret of his desire to sign Verstappen as Ferrari-bound Lewis Hamilton’s successor for F1 2025 before electing to promote teenage sensation Andrea Kimi Antonelli as George Russell’s new team-mate. With the length of Antonelli’s contract unspecified, however, and Russell’s current deal due to expire at the end of F1 2025, it is expected that Mercedes will renew their interest in Verstappen next year ahead of the major F1 2026 rule changes.
👉 F1 2024 driver salaries revealed: Who are the highest-paid drivers on the grid? 👉 F1 driver contracts: What is the contract status of every driver on the 2024 grid? Verstappen has also been linked with a move to Aston Martin, where he could reunite with F1 design genius Adrian Newey and Red Bull’s current engine suppliers Honda, who will enter a technical partnership with the Silverstone-based team in F1 2026. Having produced the most dominant campaign in F1 history in 2023, setting a new record of 19 wins across the season as he collected a third consecutive World Championship, Verstappen had been hotly tipped to storm to a fourth title in F1 2024. Yet after starting the season with four wins from the first five races, Verstappen has just added three since and remains without a victory since the Spanish Grand Prix on June 23 – a run of nine races his longest barren stretch since 2020.
With Red Bull struggling to reverse their mid-season slump, the F1 2025 season has the potential to be the most dramatic in some time with current Constructors’ Championship leaders McLaren, as well as Ferrari and Mercedes, claiming multiple victories this season. And a more competitive campaign could create the conditions for Verstappen to leave Red Bull, with rumoured details of his exit clause surfacing for the first time. A report by the Times claims that Verstappen will have the power to walk away from Red Bull if he is “outside the top three in the Drivers’ Championship after a significant part of the season.
” Contract clauses of this nature normally apply to the summer break, with PlanetF1.com revealing earlier this year that a clause in the deal of Verstappen’s team-mate, Sergio Perez, gave Red Bull the freedom to drop him in August as he was more than 100 points adrift of Verstappen at the time of the summer shutdown. If true, the clause would appear to mirror the arrangement from one of the previous deals between Red Bull and Verstappen, who was linked with Mercedes and Ferrari over the summer of 2019.
With Verstappen sitting third in the Drivers’ standings entering that year’s Hungarian Grand Prix, the final race before the summer break, Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko claimed the exit clause would only still apply for 2020 if he fell behind fourth-placed Sebastian Vettel in Budapest. Verstappen went on to finish second to Hamilton in Hungary, strengthening his grip on third place in the Championship to seemingly render the exit clause null and void. Speaking to media including PlanetF1.
com at this year’s Dutch Grand Prix, Horner confirmed that Verstappen’s current contract – signed in March 2022 – does contain “a performance element.” Yet he outlined his optimism that the World Champion will remain loyal to Red Bull for as long as the team provide him with a front-running car. Asked about Verstappen’s future at Zandvoort, Horner said: “I find it surprising how much discussion in the open media there is about this topic.
“The situation was always clear between ourselves and Max and I think that others can talk, but we’re comfortable with where we’re at.” “It’s down to us to deliver. We have an agreement until 2028, so it’s down to us to deliver.
“2028 is a long way away. It’s down to us to provide a race-winning car. “Every contract has a performance [clause] element in it.
“We’re not going to talk about what those elements are, but as long as we provide a competitive car we know what the situation is.” Despite recent reports in the German media indicating that his father and Wolff have a gentleman’s agreement in place to join Mercedes for F1 2026, Verstappen recently insisted that he plans to see out the entirety of his current Red Bull contract. He told AFP : “That’s definitely the intention.
I signed a long-term deal with the team and in a perfect world we of course end it here.” Mercedes’ preparations for the F1 2026 season, which will feature major changes to the chassis and engine regulations including a switch to 50 per cent electrification and fully sustainable fuel, are widely believed to be advanced. The Brackley-based team previously emerged as F1’s dominant force at the start of the V6-hybrid engine era in 2014, after which Mercedes won a record eight consecutive Constructors’ titles and seven straight Drivers’ crowns split between Hamilton (six) and Nico Rosberg (one).
Speaking to Sky Germany during a visit to this year’s Spanish Grand Prix, Mercedes chief executive Ola Kallenius teased that the 2026 rule changes will represent “an opportunity” to lure Verstappen, quipping that the Red Bull star “would look good in silver.” He said: “The best driver wants to have the best car. And that’s our job, to bring the best package together.
“The cards will be reshuffled in 2026. New order with new rules. That’s also an opportunity.
Who knows? “But I think Max would look good in silver, wouldn’t he?” Appearing on the Formula For Success podcast in the summer, former F1 team owner Eddie Jordan claimed that Wolff and Kallenius – as well as Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the owner of one-third Mercedes owner INEOS – met in Monaco earlier this year to prepare a “fighting fund” to cover Verstappen’s salary in anticipation of the Dutchman’s arrival. Jordan said: “In Monaco there was a meeting between Toto, Jim Ratcliffe of INEOS [and] Ola Kallenius and together they put together a fighting fund to cover off the possibility of a salary requirement to cover Max. “Max was aware of it.
I’m not actually sure he was at the meeting, but surely that gives some indication about the steely commitment by Toto and his team to actually get Max on board at some stage. “We shouldn’t be surprised to see Max in a Mercedes car in the next years.” Jordan famously predicted Hamilton’s shock move from McLaren to Mercedes at the end of the 2012 season.
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