McLaren and Red Bull have drawn F1 battle lines with Lando Norris and Max Verstappen contracts

Lando Norris and Max Verstappen — Photo: © IMAGO

F1 Analysis

McLaren and Red Bull have drawn F1 battle lines with Lando Norris and Max Verstappen contracts

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Chris Deeley Editor

Experienced sports writer covering F1 and other motorsports since 2023

Saturday 29 August 2026 15:55

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Max Verstappen and Lando Norris have a chance to do something very unusual in F1 history after signing their new contracts this month.

Other sports have their own legendary one-team men – Giggs, Maldini, Kobe, Jeter, Ernie Banks, Elway, Marino, so on, and so forth – but F1 truly lacks an equivalent star in anything like the modern era. Jim Clark and Lotus maybe, but that's going back more than half a century.

Norris, with his contract announcement on Saturday, is now locked in to drive for McLaren into his 30s. At the contract's expiry, he'll have driven his first 12 seasons in F1 for the same team.

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Verstappen's case is similar – if you're willing to squint and call Toro Rosso part of the Red Bull team, on account of them being owned and operated by the same people, and Toro Rosso/AlphaTauri/VCARB/Racing Bulls always giving their drivers to Red Bull the moment they're wanted. Maybe you can't get to 'same team', but the address on the paychecks doesn't change.

McLaren and Red Bull have committed to a path

In getting Norris and Verstappen locked down for the rest of the decade, McLaren and Red Bull have drawn the battle lines for the rest of this generation of F1 cars.

They know – or can at least be pretty sure – that their major competition is going to come from each other, and from Kimi Antonelli and Mercedes. Both teams have now planted their own flags, and backed themselves to win with their own world champions.

Now that's not great for your humble local internet sports writers, who like to have plenty of rumours to write about and speculate over for the enjoyment of our readers, but in a sporting sense it's comfortably the most sensible move.

A brief aside for the portion of readers asking 'but what about Verstappen's release clauses?'

Believe Verstappen when he said that he was closer to retirement than he was to signing with a non-Red Bull team. As aggressive as he is when his helmet visor goes down, have you ever seen anything to suggest that he's anything other than a creature of habit and stability?

The man goes to the track to race, comes home to spend chill time with his family and cats, and does some sim racing with his buddies. Hyper-competitive he may be, but it would take a cataclysm to actually budge him from the Red Bull cocoon he's been swaddled in since he was 16. Team-hopping and title chasing just aren't in his makeup.

He might leverage those release clauses to get what he wants from time to time, a little light flirtation on a yacht with Toto Wolff here and there, but he's going nowhere.

Teams prize stability above almost all else in the current era, especially in back at the factory and on the pit wall, but there's been a tendency across the sport's history of not counting drivers toward that equation – to look at them as shiny new toys to be snapped up at the first opportunity.

McLaren and Red Bull have firmly rejected that premise. By the end of these contracts, they'll have been putting Norris and Verstappen in F1 seats for a combined 27 years (28 if you want to count Max's Toro Rosso season).

The foundations are in place for the rest of the decade of the sport. The big players are all in position. Now it's time to let it play out.

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F1 Red Bull Max Verstappen McLaren Lando Norris