A lot of speculation around Max Verstappen's future.
A huge statement from Red Bull.
It is, yes. I mean, there were murmurings about this
contract extension last night.
We had a little up it would be revealed this morning.
Almost caught us on the hop, but Anthony Davidson and Karun Chandhok, you've gotta stay
up all night if you're gonna catch us out on breaking news like this.
But, I don't Karun, I'll ask you first.
Are you surprised or not that not just Max seeing out his contract, but actually
extending it till 2030?
I'm a little bit surprised at the length.
I'm not surprised that he's committed to them.
I, I thought it would be till the end of '28.
I thought it'd be another two years, to be honest.
The fact he's gone for four shows that he obviously believes in the, in the long-term
feasibility of the project. I mean, you'd have to say this year they've
had probably the fourth fastest car at a lot of races.
He sits sixth in the Driver's World Championship.
That's not where Max wants to be, but clearly they've convinced him that the long-term
potential is better than this year's gonna be.
Yeah. Is he also a little bit boxed in, Anthony, in
terms of maybe having limited options, partly because of the, the incredible eruption of
this talent of Kimi Antonelli at Mercedes, and we always linked Max with a move to Mercedes
with Toto Wolff?
Yeah, potentially. I know we always want, a lot of, you know, a
good story in Formula 1, a bit of upset maybe, and it looked at some point it was gonna be a
great silly season with lots of drivers moving around, and Max was gonna
be the instigator of that.
Talks of him moving to McLaren, kicking Oscar Piastri out of his seat potentially, and then
maybe talks going to Mercedes, and then you look at George Russell or Kimi looking
vulnerable there, and it would've created a massive story.
But it turns out it's not so much of a silly season after all, so, yeah, back to, back to
the drawing board. A, a bit like Karun, you think there's enough
signs that Max can look at with Red Bull at the moment to, to, to make this less of a
gamble with the likelihood of him still being able to fight at the front?
Well, if you just look at the last two Grand Prix, he's had He had two podiums.
So, straight away the team has got momentum.
That's what it was always gonna take for Max to stay where he is.
He wanted to see improvements with the team.
A brand new power unit for this year, making their own engine at Red Bull.
I mean, it's incredible stuff when you think where they've come from this time last year.
So he wanted to see improvement from the power unit side of things.
He wanted to see improvements from the team, and I feel like from where they've started
this season to where they are now, if you look at that trajectory, that's probably what he's
buying into