Fresh Max Verstappen retirement talk as Hamilton-Schumacher record pursuit questioned

Former F1 driver Mark Blundell wonders if Max Verstappen would want to stick around in the sport, or “just walk away from it” at a given moment.

Verstappen has spoken openly on multiple occasions about not wanting to overstay his welcome at the top level of motorsport, and his ambitions elsewhere – be it through endurance, GT racing and through his sim racing team.

Max Verstappen retirement questioned by ex-F1 driver

Already a three-time World Champion, Verstappen has admitted before that he is not motivated by records, but a tilt at matching the seven World titles held by Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher may be possible come the end of his current Red Bull contract, on his current trajectory.

Having already said he hopes to achieve elsewhere in the motorsport spectrum, former McLaren and Tyrrell driver Blundell wonders if Verstappen is the kind of driver who would just retire from Formula 1 “when he’s had enough”, without regard for records or much else.

“Well, I think he could be in a conversation that we’re having at the moment about Schumacher and Hamilton, for sure. Yeah,” Blundell told AceOdds when asked if Verstappen could be remembered as one of the all-time great Formula 1 drivers.

“Unless somebody knocks them off their perch, I think Red Bull and Verstappen as a combination are going to be tough to beat, especially over the next season or two.

PlanetF1.com recommends

F1 driver contracts: What is the contract status of every driver on the F1 2024 grid?

F1 live stream: Watch the Japanese Grand Prix with F1 TV Pro!

“It’s definitely got some possibilities there of putting a name in the history books of the big scorers. But I think Max is an interesting character.

“He’s one of those guys that you could very easily see him go and do something and actually just walk away from it and that would be the end of that.

“I don’t kind of see him at the moment being one of these guys [who] is going to stay in for the rest of his days.

“He doesn’t strike me as that person, I might be wrong, but it just strikes me that he’s all about getting done what he needs to do and the job at hand, and when he’s had enough, he’s had enough. We’ll wait and see.”

The Red Bull driver leads the World Championship this season once again after winning the opening two rounds of the season, in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia respectively.

Read next: Max Verstappen’s guarded response to Red Bull’s rumoured all-in zero-pod upgrade