Martin Brundle has told Max Verstappen to quit Formula 1 “or stop talking” after the Dutchman threatened to retire at the end of the 2026 season.
Four-time F1 world champion Verstappen has regularly vented his disapproval of F1’s new regulations and the racing it has produced in the first three rounds of the 2026 season. Furthermore, his Red Bull team are a step behind frontrunners Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren.
After finishing eighth in the Japanese Grand Prix on Sunday, Verstappen revealed he was considering his future in the sport. Yet Sky Sports pundit Brundle, a former F1 driver himself, admits he is “bored” by Verstappen’s repeated protestations, imploring the Dutchman to instead “make the most of it.”
“Max is very unfiltered,” Brundle told Sky’s F1 show podcast. “Always has been and he’s talked a lot for a long time about not being in this for the long haul, ‘I’m not going to be hanging around here in my forties’ or whatever.
“Max would say it’s getting a bit boring now. I think it’s getting a bit boring with what he’s saying. Either go or stop talking about it, because it is what it is. You’ve got to make the most of it.
“I would hugely miss his talent, his generational speed and car control is something that very few people in the history of motorsport have had. It’s quite extraordinary.
“And I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that given they [Red Bull] were building their own power train for the first time, that his management would have put in an exit clause for the end of this year to see how it goes.”
It is believed that Verstappen – who has a £50m deal with Red Bull until the end of the 2028 season – has an exit clause for the end of the current campaign, allowing him to leave if he is positioned outside the top two in the drivers’ championship by the summer break. Currently, he is ninth, 55 points behind second-placed George Russell.
“Nobody’s indispensable in this business,” Brundle added. “I’ve seen a number of amazing people come through this sport and are no longer with us, or have worked on to something else, and the sport carries on. Murray Walker [former F1 commentator] would be one of them.
“This goes for any of us. The minute we stop, people will be talking about whoever is doing the job next. There are any number of Antonellis, Bearmans, Lindblads, who would do the job incredibly well for one per cent of the money.
“So the sport will just move on if Max decides to go but he’s sort of doing quite a bit of damage meanwhile. But I think we all appreciate that’s how Max rock and rolls.”
Verstappen and Red Bull will be looking to make some progress in the five-week break before the next race in Miami on 3 May.
