Helmut Marko’s telling response ahead of Max Verstappen’s first Red Bull season without him

Next year’s F1 championship will be Max Verstappen’s first at Red Bull without Helmut Marko’s advice, but the four-time World Champ need not worry as the 82-year-old says he will “of course” be his “phone a friend joker”.

Red Bull will officially says goodbye to Marko at the end of the year, the motorsport advisor following Christian Horner out the door in the team’s biggest leadership change in its two-plus decades on the grid.

Helmut Marko will always be Max Verstappen’s ‘phone a friend’

But while Marko hasn’t held back in the days since his departure was announced when it comes to Horner, it’s also clear to see the Austrian’s affinity for Red Bull’s four-time World Champion, Verstappen.

Verstappen joined Red Bull as a Toro Rosso driver in 2015 before being promoted to the senior team in early 2016 where he won on debut, P1 at the Spanish Grand Prix ahead of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen.

That marked the beginning of the success story with Verstappen and Red Bull winning 71 grands prix, four World titles, and three Constructors’ trophies.

Although the storyline was tarnished a bit in 2024 and 2025 when the Horner allegations emerged, Red Bull fell behind McLaren on track and Verstappen was widely linked to a move to Mercedes, Marko and the Dutchman’s relationship never once showed signs of cracking.

So much so, Verstappen intervened in early 2024 when Marko’s position within Red Bull was on the line amidst the Horner troubles, with the driver making it clear that his own position in the team was contingent on Marko’s.

But a year and more on from that, Red Bull confirmed in early December that Marko would be leaving the team at the end of the year.

After more than 20 years of tenure working with Red Bull, the statement says that Marko has made a personal decision to step away from his role, where he has served in an official capacity as a senior advisor to the F1 operations on behalf of Red Bull GmbH.

But while he’s parted ways with Red Bull, the Austrian says he will always be Verstappen’s “phone a friend joker”.

Speaking to ServusTV as per Racingnews365, that question was put to Marko, who replied: “Of course I will.

“But Max Verstappen is a four-time world champion and has, in the meantime, matured into one of the best drivers in the world.

“He doesn’t need me anymore. He knows so much himself and has developed such incredible knowledge and such incredible skill.

“And I believe we will see further great feats from him.”

Marko had previously revealed he informed Verstappen of his decision in a private phone call after speaking with Red Bull’s Oliver Mintzlaff and Chalerm Yoovidhya.

“I didn’t discuss [my decision] with anyone, but called Oliver Mintzlaff, the manager responsible at Red Bull, in Dubai and asked if we could meet briefly,” Marko told Austria’s ORF.

“A kind of championship dinner was planned. And we met before the dinner. I told him what I wanted.

“We discussed for a while whether a partial solution was still possible. I said that if we were going to do it, we had to do it completely.

“That happened ad hoc. The other shareholder from the Thai family [Yoovidhya] was also present. But it was all very amicable and went very well.

“Max should have been there, too. There were some problems with his flight, so he wasn’t there.

“I called him the next day. It wasn’t a normal conversation. There was a certain melancholy in the air. He said he never could have imagined that he would ever achieve such success.”

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