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Ahead of his first race with Red Bull without Christian Horner at the helm, four-time champ plays down the Briton’s exit.
Whatever way you look at it, for the last eighteen or so months the Austrian outfit has appeared to be a team in freefall, and Horner’s mid-season sacking has done nothing to convince otherwise, indeed quite the opposite.
The previous high-level departures including Adrian Newey and Jonathan Wheatley had already clearly inflicted damage, and at a time the team is struggling with a crap car and the possibility of another crap car next season powered by an equally crap engine, it is no wonder that there is speculation over the future of its prized asset.
Facing the media for the first time since Horner’s sacking, Verstappen sought down to play the impact it will have, if only on himself.
“No, it doesn’t really,” he replied when asked if the situation will affect his own plans.
“I think people can have a difference of opinion here and then, and I actually expect that to happen,” he continued, “because if everyone always agrees there is a problem. You need to have difference of opinions.
“I don’t think it will matter at all for my decision in the future,” he insisted, “the only thing that matters is that we work on the car and make it as fast as we can.
“The last one and a half years have not been what we want to be,” he admitted, in a masterpiece of understatement. “Now we try and be more competitive this year a little bit, but for sure also with the new regulations.”
Asked when he learned of Horner’s sacking, which came on the Wednesday after the British Grand Prix, Verstappen revealed that he learned on the Tuesday, having been informed by the team’s shareholders.
“I have a good relationship with them,” he said, “so I think it’s quite normal that they inform some people in the team, before it goes out.
“At the end of the day, I think in this world things like that can happen,” he added. “And when they told me it wasn’t like they just hung up the phone, you have a conversation about it. I don’t need to go into detail what they said.”
Not wanting to give too much away, he said: “The management and the shareholders decided that they wanted to change and at the end of the day they run the team and I’m the driver, so whatever they decide it’s fully their right to do what they want, and that’s basically how it happened.
“At the same time, you look back at those twenty years of Red Bull, I think we’ve had a lot of great years, great results. Now, naturally of course, there are also years where it’s not going that well and I think the last one and a half years have not gone how we would have liked. And management decided they wanted to steer the ship in a different direction, probably. And then everyone else has to anyway agree to that and look forward.
“I’m excited for the team now moving forward,” he insisted, “because that’s what we have to do. Looking back doesn’t make sense. But at the same time, you do appreciate those twenty years. The relationship between myself and Christian, for example, that doesn’t change. Of course, he’s not here now during a race weekend, but he’s still like a second family to me.”
Asked about the new team boss, Laurent Mekies, he said: “I’ve had a few meetings with him already. I cannot say right now within two weeks of not even action on track that suddenly everything is different or better, but we are trying to be better and it’s been good.
“He’s a very nice guy first of all, very clever guy,” he added. “He’s been in different areas of the F1 paddock as well, and I think that can be helpful. And he’s incredibly motivated and I like that. You can see the fire.”
Naturally, there was the question of his own future.
“There’s a possibility I don’t wake up tomorrow, so that there is no driving at all,” he smiled. “Life is unpredictable, but in general I’m very happy where I’m at and I hope, and it was still the target that we set out when we signed the new deal, that I would drive here until the end of my career.”
