Red Bull have signed reigning world champion Max Verstappen through to the end of the 2028 season. After making his F1 debut with Scuderia Toro Rosso in 2014, the Dutch driver moved to Red Bull in 2016.
Verstappen finished fifth in his first year with Red Bull and has been sixth or better since. The 24-year-old finally claimed his first world championship last year after winning 10 of the 22 races.
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He finished third in this week’s Monaco GP and leads the driver standings at 125 points, nine ahead of the next placed Charles Leclerc of Ferrari. The Red Bull driver has recorded a podium in every race he has finished this season.
The youngest driver to ever race in a grand prix, at 17, Verstappen said that he might retire when his Red Bull contract expires.
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“I’m not planning on changing teams. I’m happy here and they are happy with me. But I haven’t made up my mind what I will do after 2028. I might stop. I have been in Formula 1 since I was 17. It’s been a long time. I’ve done a lot of seasons in F1,” Max Verstappen said, as per Daily Mail.
In 2028, he will turn 31. Lewis Hamilton, seven-time world champion, is racing at 37 and Fernando Alonso at 40.
Verstappen said he is interested to ‘do other types of races’.
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“I may want to do different stuff. By 31, I don’t know whether I will have peaked or where the drop-off in performance may have occurred. I want to do other types of races — endurance racing, for example. Maybe I will have had enough of travelling all the time. Maybe I will want an easier life and just to do the races I like,” he said.
“Whenever an opportunity comes to win a championship, you want to take it. If I’m in a fight in 2028 it may be stupid to suddenly stop. It’s difficult to know.’