Max Verstappen is the greatest driver in F1, but McLaren still shouldn't sign him

Brown and Verstappen at McLaren — Photo: © IMAGO

Max Verstappen

Max Verstappen is the greatest driver in F1, but McLaren still shouldn't sign him

Can they? It's not clear. Should they? Maybe not!

Chris Deeley

Thursday 6 August 2026 20:57

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Another summer, another string of questions about Max Verstappen's future - is he happy, is he leaving, is he retiring, will he go to Mercedes, will he go to McLaren, what if he stays at Red Bull, is he on holiday with Toto Wolff, will Red Bull give him a winning car soon, and can we stretch the rule of three to include having three sets of three questions in this list?

The answers, in no particular order, are no, yes, maybe, no, no, a complete mystery, maybe?????, hopefully, and no. We think.

But there's another question that hasn't come up much, which might deserve more than the perfunctory answers above.

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Never mind 'should Max Verstappen sign with McLaren?' - how about 'should McLaren even sign Max Verstappen?'

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McLaren vs Verstappen

If you're the type of savvy consumer who reads the headline before you click it, you've probably intuited that the short answer to that question is 'no'. The long answer though, the one that starts 'no, because...', is much more interesting.

First, the obligatory caveats. Yes, Verstappen is the best driver in the sport right now. Yes, he would be an upgrade on Lando Norris or Oscar Piastri behind the wheel. No, that doesn't mean everything.

As well as being in the business of fine-tuned machines, F1 teams are fine-tuned machines themselves. A gear slipping has a knock-on effect. Very few parts exist in a vacuum. Swapping drivers changes more than just the number on the nosecone and the colour of the helmet in the cockpit.

In other words, this isn't a video game. You can't just pick the driver with the higher numbers and drop him into your car expecting things to be smooth.

Bringing Verstappen into McLaren would cause shockwaves throughout the entire organisation, as would sacking the driver being turfed out of his seat for the Dutchman, most likely Piastri.

It would mean developing a new driver/race engineer relationship with the notoriously specific Verstappen (they will have Gianpiero Lambiase, but if he really wanted to be Verstappen's race engineer he wouldn't be leaving Red Bull). It would mean a whole side of the garage learning just how he likes his car set up. It would mean the dynamics of the team shifting dramatically.

Lambiase is leaving Verstappen and Red Bull.

McLaren insist that 'papaya rules' isn't a term they use behind the scenes anymore, but the spirit behind them still remains (as was clear in Hungary last time out). That goes out of the window entirely with Verstappen behind the wheel, barring some kind of miracle.

He immediately becomes the most powerful driver the team has had since Ayrton Senna. Norris might find that difficult to stomach, as the man who came into this season as the team's first drivers' champion since 2008.

None of this is disqualifying, of course. There are a lot of teams and team principals who would look at all of the above, and say 'yes, but he's Max Verstappen. You sign him and work everything else out later'. They might even be right.

McLaren shouldn't, though. What does it take to win in F1? Usually, the answer to that is 'the best car'. If you don't have a driver who can steer the best car on the grid to a championship, then it's absolutely time to tear up a contract or two and go big-game hunting so that you've got a chance when your engineers have done their part.

Zak Brown and Andrea Stella do have someone who can win a championship in the best car though [source: he just did it last year]. Verstappen would be a racing upgrade. He also probably isn't worth the hassle right now.

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