Max Verstappen urged to complete 'unbelievable' move as Red Bull driver 'in talks' over secret swap deal
A Formula 1 race winner has urged Max Verstappen to switch teams at the end of the 2026 season amid reports he is in talks over a shock swap deal.
Verstappen, a four-time world champion, has repeatedly criticised the new regulations that are new for this season and has suggested he could quit the sport.
His main issue is with the 50/50 split between combustion and electric power, which means drivers have to place more emphasis on using battery power around the lap.
On longer straights, the battery runs out of power and causes 'super-clipping', where the car decelerates due to that lack of power.
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He claimed last month that it was 'not mentally doable' to continue racing in Formula 1 if a proposal to change the split to 60/40 in favour of combustion power - which has been agreed in principle - does not end up going through.
Aside from those issues, Red Bull's performance levels have not been strong in the opening months of the season and Verstappen has just one podium - a third-placed finish achieved in Canada - to his name.
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He has been victim of a number of reliability issues, such as a brake failure that caused him to crash out of Monaco qualifying and a power unit failure that forced him to retire after one lap of the Monaco Grand Prix. Verstappen had qualified in second in Monte Carlo.
Having been repeatedly linked with a move away from Red Bull since last season, the Daily Mail are now reporting that he has been approached over potentially following his long-time race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase to McLaren.
Lambiase will leave Red Bull in no later than 2028 - an exact date has not been disclosed - to become McLaren's head of engineering.
It is claimed that McLaren and Verstappen's representatives have held 'preliminary talks' over the four-time world champion potentially joining the team as Lando Norris' new team-mate.
If an agreement is reached, it is reported that Oscar Piastri would likely move to Red Bull in a direct swap deal 'possibly as early as next year' - meaning Verstappen could in fact precede Lambiase's arrival at McLaren.
Piastri and Norris are both under long-term contracts at McLaren, with Piastri's deal due to expire at the end of 2028, so it remains to be seen how any compensation fees would factor in to the equation.
Piastri, Norris and Verstappen were locked in a battle for the Drivers' Championship, which was eventually won by Norris, at the end of last season.
Norris finished in third in the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix to take the championship by two points ahead of Verstappen, who was chasing a fifth consecutive title.
Ex-F1 race winner urges Verstappen to join McLaren
Juan Pablo Montoya, who won seven Grands Prix in spells with Williams and McLaren between 2001 and 2006, says that Piastri 'could fill that Max Verstappen gap' if he joined Red Bull - but says he hopes Verstappen completes an 'unbelievable' move to Mercedes in place of George Russell instead.
"The power balance, everyone would say, is on Kimi Antonelli's side at Mercedes," Montoya told BetVictor. "So, do you want to damage that mojo by bringing somebody in?
"Toto Wolff [Mercedes team principal] might be thinking that if I had these two, Kimi and Max, I would win everything. And he's very good at managing people like that. He's very good at managing relationships and he's done it before.
"Having Max and Antonelli in the same would be box office. It would be like having Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost in the same team. And look what happened there. It was incredible. That is priceless.
"But you know what comes with it? Aggravation. And do you want that size headache, and can you manage that headache?
"It would be an unbelievable story. Can you imagine that, how cool it would be? For us, outside looking in, it would be a dream team."
Topics: Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, Formula 1, McLaren
Ryan Smart