Max Verstappen and Nico Hulkenberg start 2025 with vastly different outlooks on the Formula 1 season ahead with contrasting goals on the tables for Red Bull and Sauber.
While Red Bull will attempt to win back the constructors’ championship that McLaren prised away in 2024, the aim at Sauber is to get off the bottom of the standings ahead of becoming Audi in 2025. To try and achieve that, the Swiss squad will field two new drivers in their cars.
Hulkenberg has joined Sauber from Haas on a multi-year works Audi contract to bring a very experienced presence to the underperforming squad. The German will race alongside rookie Gabriel Bortoleto, who won the 2023 Formula 3 and the 2024 Formula 2 titles at the first go.
The objective facing Hulkenberg in his first term back at Sauber, having driven for the Hinwil outfit back in 2013, is vastly unlike the target Verstappen enters the year with. He welcomed the New Year as a four-time Formula 1 drivers’ champion set on winning a fifth title in a row.
Nico Hulkenberg questions if Max Verstappen would stick to his F1 retirement threat
Yet while the Red Bull racer has won the last four drivers’ championships, he has continually fuelled speculation that Verstappen could retire from Formula 1 when his contract expires in 2028. Even though Red Bull paid Verstappen a salary of £47m before any bonuses in 2024.
The Dutchman has often suggested he could call it quits after the 2028 season with the path Liberty Media and the FIA are taking F1 leaving Verstappen somewhat disillusioned. He also notes that the 63-time Grand Prix winner marked his F1 debut back in 2015 with Toro Rosso.
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But Hulkenberg is not sure if Verstappen would keep to his word to explore a world beyond the Formula 1 paddock if he retired from Grand Prix racing. Instead, the German would not be surprised to see Verstappen return to F1 like Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso.
“It can move [and] it can change,” Hulkenberg told RacingNews365. “It’s obviously [about] feelings and emotions. It’s a lot of things, a lot of factors playing into that.
“Max is in a very different situation and a different career to me. He’s a four-time world champion, fresh from the bakery. But you never know. We’ve had so many champions who retire and then they feel after two years, ‘Actually, I’m missing something’.
“Leaving F1 leaves a big hole in a way because you experience things here you don’t get in the outside life, in a normal life. Saying these things is one thing, and then what actually happens can be a different thing.”
Max Verstappen has ruled out a sabbatical in 2025 but one could become realistic
While Kelly Piquet is expecting her first child with Verstappen, he has ruled out the idea of a sabbatical in 2025 to spend time with his family. Yet the prospect of the 27-year-old hanging up his Formula 1 racing gloves sooner than most drivers do essentially remains on the cards.
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But Verstappen’s retirement from Formula 1 ultimately becoming a sabbatical as Hulkenberg suggests could become the case is not an unlikely prospect, either. Many drivers have opted to return to the grid in the years following their move to retire, and many more to come will.
Alonso retired from F1 after the 2018 season just to return in 2021, making the Spaniard the most recent example. The two-time F1 champion walked away after four troubled years for McLaren but craved a chance to vie for another title. Other drivers returned with new goals.
Schumacher initially retired from F1 after the 2006 season, having seen Alonso beat him to the two previous drivers’ championships. But the seven-time drivers’ champion returned in 2010 to help lead Mercedes after they took over Brawn GP and he stayed for three seasons.
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