Red Bull told to keep Verstappen at all costs

Jacques Villeneuve says Red Bull has “lost its sparkle” and must do everything it can to keep Max Verstappen, arguing the reigning force of recent years has been reduced to relying on one driver after a wave of senior departures and internal conflict.

Speaking on the Sky Sports F1 Show after the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, the 1997 Formula 1 world champion said Verstappen is now “the only good thing in the team right now” apart from the engine. His central point was that Red Bull is no longer being judged as a team in its own right. “We don't talk about them, we just talk about Max,” Villeneuve said. “Thank God he's there because he can still drive this car hard.”

Villeneuve tied that decline to the loss of key figures who helped build Red Bull’s winning structure. He named Christian Horner, Jonathan Wheatley, Adrian Newey and Helmut Marko among the senior names no longer in place, and said Verstappen has been left as “the last remaining soldier.” In Villeneuve’s view, that has hollowed out the organization around a driver who arrived after the team had already been built into a frontrunner.

He described Red Bull as “a very political place” over the last two or three years, with internal struggles over leadership badly damaging the outfit. “It's very difficult to see a good future at Red Bull,” Villeneuve said, adding that the team is “going down” and “hasn't reached the bottom yet.” He also said Red Bull has “gotten rid of everyone that’s made this team what it is today.”

Those comments come against a poor start to the season by Red Bull’s standards. Verstappen has managed only one podium in the opening seven Grands Prix, while one summary of the current standings places the team fourth in the constructors’ championship.

For Villeneuve, that makes Verstappen’s position even more important, but also underlines the limits of what one driver can do. He said Verstappen cannot “handle the team on his own” because “he's not a car designer.” While praising Verstappen’s ability to develop the car and identify what it needs, Villeneuve argued Red Bull now has to rebuild the structure and personnel around him if it wants to recover and give itself any chance of keeping its most important asset.