Max Verstappen is preparing for one of the biggest years of his life.

The reigning four-time world champion has his sights set on a fifth straight title, a feat only Michael Schumacher has accomplished, which would cement his place among the all-time greats.

Barring a big performance step by Red Bull this winter, the Dutchman faces the most serious challenge to his crown yet, as the inroads made in the second half of last year by McLaren and Ferrari are expected to continue.

Off the track, there are changes, too, as Verstappen and his long-term partner Kelly Piquet are expecting their first child together, so it’s only natural for him to be thinking about the future.

Though only 27, Verstappen has previously said he is closer to the end of his career than the beginning. He is under contract with Red Bull until 2028, having signed one of the most lucrative contracts in the sport’s history just over three years ago. But with so much change on the horizon, this year could represent a crossroads.

Sixty-three wins, 40 pole positions, 112 podiums and four world championships put Verstappen and Red Bull among the most successful driver-team partnerships in F1 history.

Ever since Red Bull gambled on Verstappen’s youth, placing him in F1 with its sister team, Toro Rosso, at 17 in 2015 before promoting him to its senior team just a year later, both sides have reaped the rewards.

Rarely has Verstappen shown any serious signs of disgruntlement or frustration at Red Bull. The only public hint he could look to leave came early last season when Red Bull team advisor Helmut Marko faced scrutiny over his potential role in the leaks surrounding the investigation into team principal Christian Horner.

Verstappen said he could not continue at the team without Marko, whose future was resolved quickly after meeting with Red Bull GmbH managing director Oliver Mintzlaff. Verstappen kept saying he wanted a peaceful environment in which to race. By the end of the season, that’s what he had.

The fraught start to Red Bull’s year caused Verstappen to be linked with a move to Mercedes, which needed a driver to replace the Ferrari-bound Lewis Hamilton. Mercedes chief Toto Wolff has always admired Verstappen and regularly hinted at an interest in signing him across last year — and even spoke with Verstappen’s father and manager in the summer — prior to confirmation that Andrea Kimi Antonelli would join alongside George Russell. Following the announcement, Wolff said he saw the duo as representing Mercedes’ future.

Speaking to journalists in December to reflect on the year, Horner said that, “at no point did I have any concerns that (Verstappen) wanted to leave.” While he understood why there’d be interest, Horner noted the public nature of what he described as “noise” around Verstappen’s future. “The serious stuff is usually done behind the scenes,” he said, “not through the media.” The shocking nature of Hamilton’s Ferrari move last February acts as recent proof of that.

Horner’s theory would have been front of mind in mid-January when the Daily Mail reported Aston Martin’s commercial chief had told prospective sponsors about the team’s plan to sign Verstappen with a dizzying $1 billion price tag featured in the story. Aston Martin categorically denied the report when reached by The Athletic.

Aston Martin has always been ambitious about becoming a world champion operation under Lawrence Stroll. The team has a new state-of-the-art factory at Silverstone. In March, it will welcome Adrian Newey, Red Bull’s outgoing chief technical officer and the most decorated car designer in F1 history. It will also secure an exclusive engine supply from Honda, which has powered Verstappen to all his F1 titles at Red Bull, starting in 2026. All these factors could prove attractive to any driver looking to move, not to mention the financial might behind the project.

But the Aston Martin project is still a work in progress. In early 2023, Fernando Alonso emerged as the closest contender to Verstappen and Red Bull, regularly finishing on the podium. The team’s form has since faded. It failed to finish a race any higher than fifth last year and has undergone an off-track reshuffle this winter, with team CEO Andy Cowell now assuming the role of team principal. The building blocks may be coming together for Aston Martin, but it still looks to be a couple of steps off disrupting F1’s established ‘big four’ of Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren.

Aston Martin would love to have Verstappen, but would it appeal to him? (Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images)

Verstappen’s priority is to drive a winning car. He had to bide his time waiting for Red Bull to get in a position to fight for the title, so dominant was Mercedes through the late 2010s, but he hasn’t lost a championship since getting the machinery capable of winning one in 2021. This year’s competition will be intense, but he proved last year that even without the quickest car for the bulk of the season, he is very hard to beat.

Next year could define what the final years of Verstappen’s existing Red Bull contract could look like. The new car design and engine rules promise to shake up the pecking order and give the potential for one team to pull clear and dominate, similar to Mercedes in 2014 or Red Bull in 2022 and 2023. The added significance of 2026 for Red Bull is that its in-house engine program, Red Bull Powertrains, which works in collaboration with Ford, will become the official power unit supplier to the team.

Red Bull knows the upside of forming its own engine division. For the first time, it will be in total control of its destiny and not reliant on the performance of a customer engine. Its previous partnership with Renault turned sour when the French manufacturer failed to produce a competitive power unit, leaving Red Bull powerless to contend with Mercedes and Ferrari regularly.

But even with the impressive facility under construction in Milton Keynes, going from a start-up operation to an engine manufacturer capable of contending with F1’s established names in under four years is a big ask. Red Bull itself will reap the rewards — or pay the price — for its level of performance in 2026.

“For us bringing in our own power units, there are huge risks associated with that,” Horner said. “But there’s also upsides between the integration between the two worlds. We’re the only team other than Ferrari to have everything on one campus, under one roof, and we’re already seeing the synergy between engine engineers and designers and chassis designers.”

While power unit performance has more or less evened out in F1, there is an expectation for some large swings at the start of the new rule cycle in 2026 that could be the most significant performance differentiator. It’ll only make it more important for Red Bull and Ford’s new project to get off to a strong start, particularly to ensure Verstappen has the car he needs to keep fighting for wins and championships.

Few, if any, of F1’s all-time greats have enjoyed all their success with a single team. Schumacher wrote the bulk of his legacy with Ferrari, but his first two titles came with Benetton in the mid-1990s. Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna both had spells at multiple teams, while Hamilton is now embarking on his third team adventure, having joined Ferrari in 2025. Arguably, the only great to do it all with a single team was Jim Clark, whose race starts were all with Lotus in the 1960s.

It would make Verstappen something of an outlier if he were to spend the entirety of his F1 career within the Red Bull family. Most greats look to move on and prove themselves elsewhere. But given that Verstappen has little care for statistics or records, it’s unlikely this kind of romanticism would appeal to him in the way it does to other drivers. He’s never seemed like one to harbor dreams of racing for a particular team, as Hamilton did with Ferrari, so for him to see out his career at Red Bull would come as no great surprise.

That mindset is also why he does not want to be racing forever. Celebrating his 200th race at Zandvoort last year, Verstappen scoffed at the idea of being around for another 200. “We’re past halfway (in my career), for sure,” he said, adding that his future beyond 2028 was not on his mind. “I just want to see how it goes, also see the new regulations first, if it’s fun or not,” Verstappen said.

The next two seasons will be pivotal for Red Bull and Verstappen’s future together. (Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

The level of enjoyment Verstappen gets from the new cars arriving in 2026, of which he’s previously cast doubt on how they will drive, will be instrumental to how much longer he wants to race in F1. The moment he stops having fun, he’ll hit pause. It is also why the officiating of F1, namely the controversy surrounding swearing that Verstappen’s relatively innocent F-bomb in Singapore sparked last September, could influence his future. The debate is unlikely to go away after the FIA, the sport’s governing body, announced new guidelines for penalizing so-called ‘misconduct’ with fines, point deductions and even race bans.

That’s not to say racing won’t be part of Verstappen’s life whenever he decides to stop. He’s long dreamed of entering the 24 Hours of Le Mans with his father, Jos, and regularly spends weekends driving GT sportscars just for fun. His horizons reach beyond F1.

“He’s very old-school in many respects: he just wants to drive,” Horner said. “I think some of the noise and the circus around Formula One is what doesn’t sit comfortably with him. So long as he’s getting the enjoyment out of what he does, he’ll do it.

“But I think as soon as that enjoyment drops, he’s got the strength of character and personality to say, ‘Do you know what? I’m going to go and drive GTs next year.’ He’s unique in the sense that Formula One doesn’t define him.”

There’s a big, big world beyond F1. Verstappen understands the sacrifices needed to compete for wins in F1, and that may become more acute once he becomes a father. He will be one of only two fathers on the grid, along with Sauber driver Nico Hulkenberg, who spoke to The Athletic about how fatherhood changes one’s outlook on racing.

But so long as he remains capable of fighting for championships, the motivation will remain as strong as ever. As he put it after scoring win number 19 out of 22 races in 2023, the championship long since a foregone conclusion: “Winning is great. Why would I not want to win when you have the opportunity to win?”

As long as Red Bull can keep giving Verstappen a happy environment, a winning car and the means to enjoy the sport, there’s little reason to think he might look elsewhere.

Top photo: Mark Thompson/Getty Images