Max Verstappen now ‘doesn’t really trust’ one department at Red Bull who won’t take responsibility for 2025 issues

Red Bull Racing know they haven’t done a good enough job for Max Verstappen and Yuki Tsunoda this year.

Max Verstappen came into the 2025 F1 season as the reigning champion despite Red Bull’s drop-off at the end of the previous campaign.

Sergio Perez simply couldn’t cope with Red Bull’s car last year and the struggles Liam Lawson and Yuki Tsunoda have suffered since suggest that these problems are ingrained within the team.

Verstappen was adamant Lawson wasn’t to blame when he found driving the RB21 at its full capacity virtually impossible during his two race weekends with the team.

Tsunoda hasn’t fared much better and during his seven Grand Prix as a Red Bull driver, he’s only scored seven points.

It speaks volumes that rookie Isack Hadjar has spent the entire season with the sister Racing Bulls team and outscored Tsunoda and Lawson in the drivers’ championship.

Verstappen’s future at Red Bull is a constant topic of discussion and while he admitted after the Spanish Grand Prix that his championship hopes for 2025 are almost certainly over, he may be beginning to worry about the long-term prospects of the team.

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Max Verstappen doesn’t ‘trust’ Red Bull technical department after 2025 concerns

Dutch commentator and journalist Nelson Valkenburg was speaking on The Race F1 Podcast in the aftermath of the race in Barcelona.

Valkenburg was asked whether this might be the last time Verstappen has a chance of winning a championship with Red Bull in the near future due to concerns over their power unit next year, and their failure to catch McLaren this year.

He explained: “That is working under the assumption that he has nowhere else to go but to stay at Red Bull.

“But it is a concern and the concern is first the fact that Red Bull, Ferrari and other teams really pinned all their hopes on Barcelona and they got a really cold shower.

“Secondly, it speaks to the inflexibility of the Red Bull team in taking [the] blame at least for wrong design choices.

“If that inflexibility, that single-mindedness that seems to be there leads to choices that Verstappen has no faith in for next year, let alone the engine department, but just the fact that he doesn’t really trust the technical department within Red Bull to build a car that he likes, then it could very well be that he chooses to leave.

“Whether or not Red Bull will be a championship-winning outfit next year is within our grasp at this point, I think nobody on Earth knows.

“Maybe Max has the best idea of where the engines are because I’m pretty sure Honda and Mercedes have kept him up to date as they tried to lure him away from Red Bull.

“In the end, whether or not it’s another title for this year, next year, I don’t think he cares.”

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Pierre Wache has work to do to convince Max Verstappen at Red Bull

Red Bull have insisted since last season that it was purely a coincidence that the team’s downturn coincided with Adrian Newey announcing his departure.

Pierre Wache was the man Christian Horner decided would step into Newey’s position and he’s certainly playing a bigger role this season.

Wache was furious with Tsunoda during the Monaco Grand Prix as he couldn’t be used to help Verstappen’s strategy.

The mandatory two-stop race was determined by teams like Racing Bulls and Williams being able to work together to maximise their points, but Tsunoda’s Q1 exit limited his effectiveness.

Ralf Schumacher thinks Verstappen now has no hope in Wache but it appears as though many of the teams within Red Bull have work to do to get the four-time world champion back onside.