Verstappen: Life After Horner Is Less Stressful
The four-time champion makes no secret that the calm under Mekies at Milton Keynes suits him better than the drama of the previous era — but leaves the door ajar for his old boss’s return.
Max Verstappen isn’t the type to feed conflict for the sake of a storyline. Asked by the Press Association what life inside Red Bull looks like a year after Christian Horner’s departure, he answered with the kind of cold directness that has long been his trademark: calmer. Not necessarily more wins because of it — just less noise around them.
Calm as a strategy, not a compliment
“To be honest, I like to see that people get on. It is not nice when you constantly have tension between people,” he said. He added something that sounds almost mundane, until you remember how many years the exact opposite was the norm at Milton Keynes: “Of course, from the outside, people like it, but honestly between the teams, it is better when you have just a friendly relationship.”
Under Frenchman Laurent Mekies — already with one win to his name this season — Verstappen describes the atmosphere plainly: “It is not as spicy, but I obviously quite like how things are going at the moment, with everyone’s behaviour, let’s put it like that.” The logic is simple and hard to argue with: less internal friction means fewer distractions, and fewer distractions mean more focus where it actually matters — in the car.
A door left ajar
Verstappen isn’t slamming the door behind his former boss. Asked about a possible Horner return to the paddock, he stays diplomatically neutral: “He has shown he did a good job. Of course, people spread a lot of rumours, and I don’t know how much of that is true. I don’t want to sound rude, but it is also not my problem or concern. He wants to come back, and if there is a good opportunity, I am sure he will do it, but I don’t know where that is going to be.”
Formula 1 can keep its drama — Verstappen would simply prefer it stayed out of the office.
The timing of these comments, landing in the very week Horner’s book is expected, is probably nothing more than coincidence — but at Milton Keynes, where the PR department has long learned to count time as carefully as the engineers count seconds in a pit stop, few things stay accidental for long.
