Max Verstappen has chosen to extend with Red Bull until 2030 despite a very difficult season. Laurent Mekies reveals a direct relationship, full of frustrations and open confrontations.
Max Verstappen and Red Bull have ended speculation about their future together by extending their collaboration until the end of the 2030 season. A loyalty that comes at a particularly delicate moment for the Milton Keynes team, now far from its past dominance.
Laurent Mekies does not try to hide the difficulties faced by his team. The Red Bull director acknowledges that the last few months have generated their share of frustrations, including in his relationship with Verstappen.
But rather than weakening their collaboration, these difficulties have strengthened a way of working based on absolute frankness.
“Every time we don’t win, we are – and will remain – brutally honest with each other” explains Mekies.
Verstappen wanted to stay at Red Bull
Despite the many rumors surrounding his future, Mekies assures that Verstappen never really hid his desire to continue the adventure with the team that allowed him to win his four world titles.
“The truth is simple: Max has always said he wanted to stay at Red Bull.”
According to the Frenchman, the Dutchman’s stance never changed during the negotiations.
“He said it from our very first conversations about the extension to the very last. When we finally agreed on everything, he told me: ‘I told you I always wanted to stay!'”
Verstappen himself had expressed a similar view at Zandvoort, even explaining that he saw himself more likely to leave Formula 1 one day than to join another team.
His extension until 2030 has therefore closed a file that regularly fueled speculation.
“We will confront each other”
This does not mean that everything is peaceful internally.
Red Bull is going through an extremely complicated 2026 season and the RB22 has not allowed Verstappen to regularly fight at the front. A situation particularly difficult to accept for a team used to victories and titles.
Mekies acknowledges that exchanges with his driver can therefore become particularly direct.
“We have only one mission: to win.”
And when this goal is not achieved, neither man tries to hide his dissatisfaction.
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“We will confront each other, we will express our frustrations, because that is what we all feel as competitors.”
A relationship that is therefore more based on constructive confrontation than on the constant search for consensus.
A particularly difficult first half of the season
Mekies acknowledges that the introduction of the new regulations placed Red Bull in a delicate position from the start of the championship.
“We obviously had a complicated first part of the season with the new regulations and a car that was not competitive at the beginning of the year.”
The late development of the 2025 car, Red Bull having continued to push until the end in the fight for the title, also complicated the preparation of this new generation of cars.
The results speak for themselves today.
Red Bull risks experiencing its first winless season since 2015. For Verstappen, such a scenario would also be unprecedented since that same year, when he made his debut in Formula 1 with Toro Rosso.
At Zandvoort, the Dutchman himself acknowledged that Red Bull is currently only the fourth force on the grid.
Frustrations as a driving force
Despite this spectacular drop in the hierarchy, Mekies does not see Verstappen’s frankness as a threat to the team’s balance.
On the contrary, he considers this constant demand as essential to rebuild Red Bull.
“It’s what gets us out of bed every morning.”
Verstappen’s extension now offers the team valuable stability to prepare its return to the top. But the contract until 2030 does not mean that the four-time world champion will patiently accept a long period without success.
Between Verstappen and Mekies, the pact therefore seems particularly simple: no pretenses, no hidden frustrations, and a single common goal, to bring Red Bull back to victory.
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