Helmut Marko’s “great” concern that Max Verstappen could leave Red Bull has “diminished”, after all, the team is not in a crisis.

Although Verstappen is one of three Grand Prix winners in the F1 2025 championship, the reigning World Champion has a battle on his hands to win five titles on the trot.

Could Max Verstappen leave Red Bull?

McLaren’s MCL39 has emerged as the dominant car over long runs, meaning that even though Verstappen has three pole positions, he has just one solitary victory.

The McLaren team-mates have shared the rest of the spoils, Oscar Piastri claiming four wins to Lando Norris’ one to sit 16 points ahead of his team-mate in the Drivers’ Championship where Verstappen is a further 16 points behind Norris.

It had Marko declaring after the Bahrain Grand Prix, a race in which Verstappen was sixth, that Red Bull could lose their World Champion come the end of this season unless they up their pace.

“The concern is great,” Marko admitted to Sky Deutschland.

“As I said, improvements have to come in the near future so that he has a car with which he can win again. We have to create a basis with a car so that he can fight for the World Championship.”

Updating the RB21, Verstappen put his car on pole position in Saudi Arabia and again in Miami, where a new floor was in play. But he still wasn’t able to stop Piastri claiming the victories, with the Dutchman second and fourth respectively.

But even though he was almost 40 seconds down the road from the championship leader, Marko’s concerns that Verstappen could leave have lessened.

Speaking to Bild, he was asked about his ‘great’ concerns that he voiced after Bahrain, and replied: “That’s true, but they’ve already diminished.

“Max is loyal and then publicly committed to Red Bull. That fits in with how I see him at the moment. He is fully focused on his job here. That’s why I don’t think he’s even thinking about a change.

“On the contrary. I am convinced that Max will also be racing for Red Bull in 2026.”

There are, however, rumours that Aston Martin have put together a $300 million offer for Verstappen to join them in a three-year deal.

Marko brushed that aside.

“I’ve read that too. But I don’t think that plays a big role for Max,” he said. “On the one hand, he doesn’t earn that much with us, and on the other, he just wants to win.

“That’s why we have to provide him with the fastest car. We are working on that. We will soon be bringing upgrades to the car.

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Pressed on why he is now confident that Verstappen will continue with Red Bull next season, Marko explained that while Verstappen and Red Bull won’t give up in the fight to retain the World Champion, they now accept that it may not work out that way.

“Before the season, we talked about our expectations for 2025,” he said. “Everyone – including Max – agreed that defending the title is of course the goal, but we can’t assume that it will work out.

“We will do everything we can to achieve this, but nobody can expect us to always win. We have to pick up the maximum number of points possible.”

But that doesn’t mean the team is in a crisis.

“Crisis is too much to say,” said the 81-year-old. “We must not forget that we are the only team apart from McLaren to have won a Grand Prix and that our form has improved somewhat recently.

“But we are still not satisfied. Our ambition is different. We want to win races and titles.

“But for that you not only need an exceptional driver, but also the fastest car. We don’t have that at the moment.”

But while Marko specifically said “2026”, he made no mention of the last two years of the new father’s contract with Verstappen’s Red Bull deal running through to the end of the F1 2028 championship.

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