Max Verstappen has admitted he “wishes” many of his departed former Red Bull colleagues would have stayed with the team. The Dutchman won four titles in a row between 2021 and 2024, but many of those with whom he shared that remarkable success have moved on.
That includes legendary designer Adrian Newey, now working with Aston Martin, his former team boss Christian Horner who was axed last July, and his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase, who is still working at Red Bull for now but has agreed to leave for McLaren, where he will begin a more senior role in 2028.
Several mechanics and engineers who worked specifically in Verstappen’s side of the garage have also moved on, leading many to suggest the four-time world champion may become unsettled because of a lack of familiarity. But while Verstappen admits he would have preferred some people stayed, he feels the narrative around the situation’s effect on him has been inaccurate.
“People always like to focus on the negative; when people are leaving, they always make it out as if it’s something very dramatic,” he told RacingNews365. “Of course, sometimes you’re like, ‘I wish certain people would have stayed,’ but that’s life, and that’s also what you see in other sports; sometimes people move on, they change. It’s part of the culture and just how sports work in a way.
“It’s hard always to keep a very successful group together. Those are always people that other teams are also trying to find, get the talent, and it’s the same in football: when you see a great player, but then there’s another club that wants the player, they will do everything they can to get the player, or in a management structure.
“So it’s not uncommon. I feel like sometimes people have been a bit dramatic, a little bit too dramatic on that, that it only happens to us. People are leaving, they’re coming and going all the time. That’s just part of the sport in a way.”
After 10 years driving for the team, Verstappen is among the longer-serving members at Red Bull and says he acts as a leader there “just by being myself”. He added: “What I’ve done over all the years, I think, is build up a really good relationship with a lot of people, and just saying it how it is as well.
“Being very straightforward, because that’s also how I like to operate: them to me, and me back to the team. So, that’s how we try to do it. I think when you get older, you also understand it a little bit more, you get a bit more experience in life. You grow up a bit more with… you experience many more things with the people in the team as well. So it’s been, honestly, very, very natural.”