Helmut Marko drops huge Max Verstappen 2025 Red Bull team-mate hint

If it were up to Helmut Marko alone, the driver sitting alongside Max Verstappen in next year’s RB21 would be “someone from our junior programme”.

Red Bull’s driver line-up has been one of the hot topics this season with reports prior to the summer break claiming both Sergio Perez and Daniel Ricciardo could be cut from the programme.

Helmut Marko reveals which way he’s leaning for Red Bull’s 2025 line-up

But while it was confirmed that both would remain Red Bull drivers after the summer break, Ricciardo has since lost his seat to Red Bull junior Liam Lawson.

Red Bull’s junior team, VCARB, announced after the Singapore Grand Prix that Ricciardo was out and Lawson was in, the Kiwi taking over from the United States Grand Prix onwards.

But what was initially thought to be an audition for the second VCARB seat, that has taken on momentum with speculation that Lawson could even take Perez’s seat at Red Bull if he impresses. The team would then promote one of their other junior drivers, Isack Hadjar or Ayumu Iwasa, to the potentially open VCARB seat.

Marko says the first objective in the “evaluation” is to see how Lawson fares against long-time VCARB driver Yuki Tsunoda.

They were team-mates for five races last year when Lawson filled in for the injured Ricciardo, with the Kiwi the only one of the two scoring points in those races with a P9 at the Singapore GP. He also finished ahead in two of three races where both VCARB drivers saw the chequered flag.

“I don’t know in how many races he [Lawson] was faster than Yuki, but that’s why we decided that now is the time to make a comparison with Yuki. Who of the two is the fastest?” Marko told ORF.

More on Red Bull’s at times brutal driver decisions

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After that, it is up to the Red Bull hierarchy to decide who fits where in F1 2025.

Marko has made it clear which way he’s leaning with Max Verstappen staying at Red Bull and “ideally with someone from our junior program [next to him].”

“Youth is the trend again,” he added. “What we used to do, is now being done by Mercedes with Antonelli, Haas with Bearman, and I also hope that [Franco] Colapinto will end up somewhere. He was thrown in at the deep end [by Williams] and has delivered three great races.”

Red Bull, he pointed out, need to look to the future as he cannot see Verstappen racing into his 40s like Fernando Alonso or Lewis Hamilton.

“Max is not like Alonso and Hamilton,” said the motorsport advisor. “They will continue racing as long as they are physically competitive.

“He wants to win, but whether that is with four, five or six World titles is not his main focus.

“He wants to enjoy the sport, just like the rest of his life. He wants to work in an environment where he feels comfortable.”

Marko, however, doesn’t have the final say, at least not alone as confirmed when Christian Horner revealed that when the 81-year-old wanted to drop Ricciardo after the Spanish Grand Prix, Horner went to bat for the Aussie.

“Around Barcelona, Helmut wanted him out of the car, and there was already a lot of pressure on him there,” Horner told the F1 Nation podcast after Ricciardo was dropped from VCARB, adding that he did his “very best to buy him as much time in the car to allow him to deliver, otherwise he would have been out of the car after Barcelona.”

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