Max Verstappen has said he "wishes" many of his departed former Red Bull colleagues would have stayed with the team. The four-time world champion won consecutive titles between 2021 and 2024, but several key figures from that success have moved on.
Among those who have left are legendary designer Adrian Newey, now at Aston Martin, and former team boss Christian Horner, who was axed last July. Race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase, still at Red Bull for now, has agreed to join McLaren in a senior role in 2028. Several mechanics and engineers from Verstappen’s side of the garage have also departed, prompting suggestions the driver could become unsettled.
Verstappen responds to staff departures
Verstappen accepts the changes but feels the narrative around their effect on him has been exaggerated.
"People always like to focus on the negative; when people are leaving, they always make it out as if it's something very dramatic. Of course, sometimes you're like, 'I wish certain people would have stayed,' but that's life, and that's also what you see in other sports; sometimes people move on, they change. It's part of the culture and just how sports work in a way."
He added that keeping a successful group together is always difficult, and that other teams naturally try to recruit talent.
"It's hard always to keep a very successful group together. Those are always people that other teams are also trying to find, get the talent, and it's the same in football: when you see a great player, but then there's another club that wants the player, they will do everything they can to get the player, or in a management structure. So it's not uncommon. I feel like sometimes people have been a bit dramatic, a little bit too dramatic on that, that it only happens to us. People are leaving, they're coming and going all the time. That's just part of the sport in a way."
Verstappen's leadership role
Having spent a decade with Red Bull, Verstappen is among the team’s longest-serving members. He said he acts as a leader naturally.
"What I've done over all the years, I think, is build up a really good relationship with a lot of people, and just saying it how it is as well. Being very straightforward, because that's also how I like to operate: them to me, and me back to the team. So, that's how we try to do it. I think when you get older, you also understand it a little bit more, you get a bit more experience in life. You grow up a bit more with... you experience many more things with the people in the team as well. So it's been, honestly, very, very natural."
