Despite hearing questions “all the time” about his Red Bull future, Max Verstappen is “enjoying life” and embracing the challenge.

And as Red Bull search for a performance breakthrough with their RB21, Verstappen is hopeful that a strong final stint in Shanghai has now given a “clearer picture” on how they achieve that mission.

Max Verstappen ready to stick it out with Red Bull

While Verstappen began his pursuit of a fifth straight World Championship with a close runner-up finish to Lando Norris in Melbourne, the reigning champion suffered a more challenging race in China, forced to settle for P4 while Oscar Piastri took the win ahead of Lando Norris in a McLaren one-two.

But, Verstappen’s second stint serves as a sign of encouragement as his pace grew stronger on the hard tyre, positioning him to overtake Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari on his way to that P4 result.

And so after the RB21 stepped up later in the race, Verstappen was asked if he felt this is an area Red Bull could work on and find out why.

“If it’s possible to adjust, yeah,” he replied, speaking to Sky F1.

“I mean, suddenly I just picked up tyre grip, not balance. Balance is the same, but more tyre grip, where maybe others just plateaued a bit more.

“And then, of course, yeah, the lap times were more promising for us, at least. And then it was also, of course, a bit more fun to drive, and a few battles, because the first half of the race is quite tough, but we just set out to do our own pace.

“Before, in the Sprint, I tried to keep up with them, but then my tyres died, so I just did my own pace.

“The tyres were still in a decent shape when I had to pit because others were pitting around me. But yeah, that is also not, I guess, how we want to race, right? I mean, at least I want to try and keep up and hang in there, but yeah, a lot to analyse, I think.

“But at least the second stint was a lot more positive, more promising as well for us, and I hope that we can take some learnings out of that going into Japan.”

Asked if it is a case of small increments in terms of improvement for Red Bull with the RB21 currently, Verstappen added: “Difficult to say when you don’t really know where to find it or how to find it at the moment.

“But, at least that last stint I would say, gives a bit more of a clearer picture.

“But yeah, we’ll go through all the data and with 10 days, hopefully, we can learn a little bit more and be a bit more competitive in 10 days.”

The Verstappen and Red Bull dominance of F1’s ground effect era faded during last season as the team lost their way with the RB20, this fuelling talk of Verstappen looking for an exit if the situation did not improve, Mercedes and Aston Martin cropping up as speculated potential destinations.

Such talk has continued to rumble on, with Red Bull senior advisor Helmut Marko and team principal Christian Horner having admitted to the existence of a performance-related clause in Verstappen’s Red Bull contract, which runs until the end of 2028.

However, it seems Red Bull has no reason to fear that Verstappen is thinking of forcing an exit.

Quizzed on how long he is prepared to give Red Bull to recover, and whether he is happy to stay and help the recovery, Verstappen confirmed: “Yeah.

“I hear this all the time. But for me, nothing changes.

“I’m actually very relaxed. I’m very positive in my mind. I’m enjoying life, you know? So every time I jump in the car, I just try to do the best I can, and I’m not thinking about anything else, to be honest, because I feel good in life in general, if that’s in the car, outside the car, and that’s actually what matters the most.”

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And Horner is seeing Verstappen’s commitment to the Red Bull recovery cause quite clearly, claiming Verstappen is “working harder than I’ve ever seen him” and “more integrated into the engineering group” than ever before.

After Sky F1 pundit Karun Chandhok asked Horner whether Red Bull are already considering switching gears to the new F1 2026 rules, Horner responded: “Karun, it’s race two! You can’t be that defeatist.

“I mean, we’re eight points behind in the Drivers’ Championship after two races, and there’s everything to play for. And if nothing else, last year teaches you you can start as strong as you like, it’s how you finish.

“And look, we’ve got great strength and depth in our team. Everybody in the company knows we’ve got a bit of pace to find and, you know, we’ve got the tools, we’ve got the people in order to do that. It’s just unpicking it.

“I think we’ve got some very good data out of today. Max is working harder than I’ve ever seen him. He’s more integrated into the engineering group than I’ve ever seen. And you know, as he said, he seems to be enjoying that aspect, so he’s not getting super stressed.

“He’s, of course, like any driver, impatient for performance, but he’s working with the engineers to say, ‘Okay, what about this? What about this? This is what I’m experiencing as a driver. This is where I need the lap time from’, and that’s the only way, collectively, that we’re going to get performance.”

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