It’s no secret that the 2025 season hasn’t gone according to plan for Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing. Despite coming off of a fourth straight drivers’ championship, the 27-year-old hasn’t been able to consistently compete for race victories week after week, lagging behind the much quicker McLaren and having to scrap in battles with Mercedes and Ferrari to land spots on the podium.
Even still, Verstappen entered last weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring with a shouting chance at closing the gap on Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris at a track where he has dominated in the past, winning a record five times. Instead, the worst-case scenario happened—at a time when rumors about Verstappen’s future in Formula One have reached hot stove territory.
It took just two corners for Verstappen to be out of Sunday’s race in Spielberg, through no fault of his own. Mercedes rookie Kimi Antonelli took evasive action entering Turn 3, but locked his rear tires and went skidding into the Red Bull car. Both drivers were instantly eliminated from the Grand Prix, with Antonelli admitting fault and receiving a three-place grid penalty for the upcoming British Grand Prix for his mistake.
There was nothing Verstappen could have done to prevent the crash. Still, the result is devastating to what were already fleeting championship hopes—and perhaps to his future at Red Bull.
Antonelli 💥 Verstappen: Here's the incident 🎥#F1 #AustrianGP pic.twitter.com/hWuRLjZoxP
— Formula 1 (@F1) June 29, 2025
Before the track action in Austria began last weekend, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff made it more explicitly clear that he’s exploring pathways to signing Verstappen. Though no concrete talks have been held, current Mercedes driver George Russell suggested that his own extension negotiations are being held up because of the team’s pursuit of Verstappen. Wolff denied any impact of a Verstappen flirtation causing a delay with Russell’s situation, but the perception was enough. Could Mercedes really lure away Verstappen from the Red Bull system?
Any of the 10 teams on the grid would leap at the chance to get the four-time reigning world champion in its lineup. With new regulations coming next season, the chance to have the best driver on the grid in one of the quickest cars could set up the winner of the Verstappen sweepstakes for a multi-year championship run. And for the first time, Red Bull looks weak enough for Verstappen to consider his options elsewhere.
Getting wrecked out of the Austrian Grand Prix was unlucky, to be sure. That’s why it’s hard to make any rash judgment at the midpoint of the 2025 season. However, the crash ended a 31-race streak of Verstappen scoring points. He had scored in 74 of the last 75 Grands Prix—a testament to his consistency and reliability.
But the crash comes in the context of a frustrating season for Verstappen. Just two races ago, he nearly took himself out of the points by slowing down and crashing into Russell at the Spanish Grand Prix. He has just two wins through the first 11 races, his fewest since the 2020 season.
Is Verstappen still mathematically capable of catching Piastri and Norris this year? Yes, but there has been no on-track indication that he’ll be quick enough to consistently beat either McLaren driver. Bad luck aside, he qualified in seventh in Spielberg, ending a streak of four straight pole positions at the Austrian Grand Prix. That included finishing behind his former teammate, Liam Lawson, who qualified in sixth while driving in the Racing Bulls car.
Considering Lawson was given what was considered a demotion from Red Bull, Verstappen losing out to the same driver who’s now operating what’s widely considered to be a slower car is almost incomprehensible.
Meanwhile, the second seat continues to plague Red Bull. Yuki Tsunoda was all over the map on Sunday, eventually finishing 16th—last among finishers of the race. He received a 10-second penalty for tagging Alpine’s Franco Colapinto and was investigated later in the race for an incident with Lance Stroll. Tsunoda was dejected after the fact, admitting he was at a loss for an explanation as to what has gone wrong since joining the team.
All of Red Bull’s plight comes while whispers of Verstappen’s future grow louder. Christian Horner referred to talk of a Verstappen departure as noise, reiterating that Red Bull has the 27-year-old under contract until 2028. He also suggested that Verstappen gets “annoyed” by the chatter, though Verstappen has largely dodged having to answer for any of the speculation regarding his plans for next year and beyond.
What Verstappen did seem to acknowledge coming out of the Austrian Grand Prix weekend was how far a championship is out of his reach. Horner added that Red Bull isn’t even thinking about chasing after a title at this point, preferring to take the situation “race by race.”
It might be true that Red Bull’s hopes of winning either championship are near-zero, but the far bigger problem is the threat of losing one of the most dominant drivers in F1 history. What happened in Austria may not be the final straw, but it may be the latest domino that points to an impending sea change within one of the most consequential teams of the decade.
The summer break, which will begin after the Hungarian Grand Prix on Aug. 3, figures to be the key time for any massive shakeup to take place. Wolff suggested that’s when he hopes to secure Mercedes’s driver lineup for next season, specifically sometime in the middle of the four-week race hiatus.
That leaves just three races—a rapid timeline by F1 standards—for Red Bull to get back on track or at least show a vision of what the future might hold. Should the results get worse and Verstappen begin to slip further down the standings, all eyes will be on the Red Bull garage this summer.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Max Verstappen’s DNF at Austrian Grand Prix Spells Concern for Future at Red Bull.
