Fernando Alonso denies Max Verstappen threat to his…

Red Bull’s disastrous showing – by its standards – in last weekend’s Bahrain Grand Prix has fanned the burning embers of speculation that Max Verstappen will join another team for 2026.

The most lucrative offer on the table is understood to come from Aston Martin, reputed to be worth over £1 billion over five years.

Verstappen is contracted until the end of 2028, but all F1 driver contracts include performance clauses binding both sides. Ridiculous as it may seem for a driver who has won a grand prix already this season and is lying just eight points behind the championship leader to be looking for the exit, this may actually be the case.

The decision would be a strategic one with a focus on the future rather than the here and now. Red Bull will be building its own engine for next season, albeit with Ford investment and branding, while Honda is transferring its allegiance to Aston Martin – a team which will be fielding a car overseen by Adrian Newey, whose loss Red Bull appears to be feeling rather keenly.

But this would involve displacing one of Aston Martin’s drivers, both of whom have a contract for 2026. The likelihood of that individual being Lance Stroll, whose father owns the team, is slim.

“I don’t think so, as I have a contract for next year,” said Fernando Alonso when asked in the FIA press conference in Jeddah about Verstappen’s putative move.

“But I see the rumours. It’s very good for the team. The world champion is sometimes linked with other teams and a possible departure from Red Bull, and the teams they are commenting are Mercedes, Aston Martin and Ferrari.

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin Racing (Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images)

“This shows the project we’re in, the future that this team has. As I said always, even last year when I extended the contract, I will drive for as long as I feel fast and I feel competitive and the team needs me behind the wheel.

“But my contract is much longer than my racing career, so I will stay with this team for many years in a different role. And if that means I can win a world championship while I’m not behind the wheel, I will still feel very proud of the project.”

Asked if he would welcome having Max as a team-mate, Alonso said: “Yes, but’s it’s unlikely to happen. Very unlikely.”

It is only a year since Alonso announced the contract extension which will take him to the end of the 2026 season. At the time it was understood he had options at both Red Bull (replacing the underperforming Sergio Perez) and Mercedes (filling the vacancy left by Lewis Hamilton).

Alonso made a bright start to his time at Aston Martin with a series of battling drives in the first half of the 2023 season, and might even have won the Monaco Grand Prix but for an ill-fated attempt to brazen out a late-race rain shower on slick tyres. Thereafter the car slipped back in relative performance and the team has been locked in the midfield ever since.

The question now is whether Newey can effect a transformation of the team’s methodologies. Team principal and CEO Andy Cowell confirmed in Jeddah that Newey’s focus would be on the 2026 project, and that if he did enter the 2025 car’s orbit it would be to understand how accurately Aston Martin’s simulation ‘tools’ were correlating with track performance.

As such, the team’s place in 2026’s pecking order is purely hypothetical for now.

Little wonder, then, that as he sat on the same couch as Alonso during the pre-Jeddah press conference, Verstappen sent the question of moving teams rocketing towards the boundary.

“A lot of people are talking about it – except me,” he said with asperity.