Formula 1 pundit Juan Pablo Montoya has sparked speculation regarding a possible driver swap where Max Verstappen moves to McLaren and Oscar Piastri joins Red Bull Racing.
The Formula 1 world loves a rumour — and you’d better believe, with just one grand prix in seven weekends, it prefers its speculation spicy.
Montoya, the seven-time grand prix winner, 1999 CART champion and now F1 pundit, told his preferred betting website that there is “a suggestion” in the paddock that Oscar Piastri could defect to Red Bull Racing, with Max Verstappen replacing him at McLaren. Fox Sports, available on Kayo Sports, is the only place to watch every practice, qualifying session and race in the 2026 FIA Formula One World Championship™ LIVE in 4K.“From what I’m hearing Mark Webber is not happy the way things are going for Oscar at McLaren,” he claimed.
“A lot of times people that look after drivers will run a story like that just to stir up the pot and put pressure on the team. “Piastri would find a seat anywhere. There’s a suggestion that Max and Piastri could do a straight swap. That makes some sense.
“That would be a logical thing to do. The question is, would McLaren be comfortable spending the money that Max would want? ” Montoya’s speculation follows comments from Ralf Schumcaher, the six-time grand prix winner, suggesting much the same because Verstappen’s race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, is headed to McLaren in 2028 at the latest.
PODCAST: Andrea Kimi Antonelli wins again to extend his championship lead to 20 points on a tough day for teammate George Russell, and FIA president Muhammed Ben Sulayem says Formula 1 will return to V8 engines by 2031 at the latest. Johnny Herbert, the three-time race winner, has meanwhile theorised that McLaren would make sense for Verstappen given its impending World Endurance Championship entry could facilitate the Dutchman’s desire to one day tackle the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
There are lots of puzzle pieces in this story, and some are tempted to think they all fit neatly together. Lambiase has been Verstappen’s race engineer since the Dutchman joined Red Bull Racing in 2016, and he’s become a key ally and confidant of the four-time champion.
Verstappen told Dutch television after winning his maiden title that he didn’t want to be engineered by anyone else and that when Lambiase stopped, he would stop too — though he has since walked back that stance. Their bond is so tight that Lambiase has remained his race engineer even as he’s been elevated to higher duties at the team, becoming head of race engineering in 2022 and then head of racing in 2024 — high-profile roles with considerable workloads.
It’s a relationship so close that Lambiase consulted Verstappen and received the Dutchman’s blessing before signing his McLaren papers. Naturally, then, the theory that Verstappen must eventually end up at McLaren has gathered steam almost on its own.
“I couldn’t be happier with our driver line-up,” McLaren CEO Zak Brown told Sky Sports. “Lando and Oscar — not only are they two awesome guys on the track, off the track, but as teammates, which is so much I think what’s made McLaren successful here is the chemistry that we have in the garage, factory, with our pit wall all throughout the racing team.
Piastri signed a long-term contract only last year that will keep him at the team until at least the end of 2028. Norris is on a similarly long-term contract that runs until at least the end of 2027.
Brown himself is on a long-term deal running until the end of 2030, while team principal Andrea Stella signed a “multi-year” contract in 2024 that some have speculated will expire at the end of 2027 but whose success will keep him at the team longer — notwithstanding rumours perpetuated by Red Bull Racing that he could defect to Ferrari in the coming seasons. With Norris the reigning world champion and Piastri clearly of championship calibre, there’s no reason to doubt Brown’s insistence that he’s satisfied with his driver line-up.
Further, with McLaren at the top of its game technically as the two-time defending constructors champion, there’s no compelling reason for either of its drivers to quit the team to generate an opening for the Dutchman. Not for the first time, a driver market rumour has touched on the idea that Piastri and his management are not happy at McLaren. Usually the speculation asks for you to imagine your own reasons for this.
If not, it dredges up the greatest hits of rumours suggesting McLaren was openly biased against Piastri and in favour of Norris in last year’s title fight. While there were moments of unhappiness and even tension behind the scenes last year over various strategic calls from the pit wall that fell Norris’s way, there was never a blow-up between team and driver.
McLaren was certainly error-prone last year as it attempted to formulate strategies that wouldn’t benefit one driver over the other, but this speaks more to a persistent weakness on the pit wall rather than a preference for Norris. We still see that weakness now — in Miami it probably cost Norris victory over Andrea Kimi Antonelli, but no-one is claiming the team is now biased against him.
“I think there’s a lot of good things that come from ,” Piastri said at the end of last season. “Yes, there’s difficult moments and tension at times, but I think both Lando and I have become better drivers from pushing each other to the limit.
“We’ve had a lot of discussions through the year, and I’m sure we’ll have discussions in the off-season about anything we want to do slightly differently for next year, but I think at the end of the day, they gave us both as good a chance as the team could have to fairly fight for a world championship, and that’s all you can ask for. ” The idea, then, that Piastri is looking — or must look — for a way out of McLaren just doesn’t stack up.
Indeed forcing his way out of McLaren when it’s at the top of its game would be likely be an act of career self-sabotage, especially given Red Bull Racing’s unsteady state. Webber, the nine-time grand prix winner and 2015 World Endurance Championship titleholder, has been Piastri’s manager since 2020.
He was crucial to both getting Piastri into Formula 1 with Alpine and then to sensationally moving him to McLaren for his debut, where he’s made good on all his junior promise. Though Webber’s connection to then McLaren principal Andreas Seidl, who was his boss during his title-winning WEC season with Porsche, made it a seemingly obvious move, the Australian is far more closely aligned with Red Bull Racing in Formula 1, having scored all of his wins with the Austrian-owned team.
That connection has meant Piastri is constantly rumoured to be destined for a Milton Keynes move at some point. The Red Bull Racing that Webber competed for isn’t the same one we know today. He had a close relationship with Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz, whose personal backing was important to his stint with the team. Mateschitz died in 2022.
Team principal Christian Horner has been sacked. Sporting director Jonathan Wheatley has left. Chief technical officer Adrian Newey has moved to Aston Martin. Chief designer Rob Marshall is at McLaren.
Ciaron Pilbeam, his race engineer until his final season, is at Alpine. The list goes on and on. Webber of course is still a Red Bull athlete, retaining that connection, but he would naturally have fewer personal relationships with the F1 team given how much of it has dispersed in the more than a decade since he retired from the sport. That’s before considering the question of whether Red Bull Racing is the place Piastri should be going right now.
The team is far from the all-conquering force it was in 2023, when it won all but one race. It’s declined markedly since then — the exodus of staff is part of that — and could be teetering on the brink of a stint out of contention for regular wins. Webber’s Red Bull connection may come in handy one day — never say never — but it’s hard to see why today would be that day.
You’d also have to wonder why Piastri would think Red Bull Racing is the place to go if Verstappen, perhaps the greatest of his generation, thinks it’s not worth his time. That’s part of the reason Red Bull Racing is fighting so hard to keep the Dutchman. It’s not simply about his preternatural abilities; it’s also the no-confidence vote his departure would represent, particularly if he were to move to a rival team.
That, though, is a totally hypothetical situation today, because when we’re talking about Verstappen’s future, we’re talking about whether he wants to continue in Formula 1 at all. The public contemplation of his future is about whether he’s enjoying Formula 1 under these new regulations and whether he would be better off seeking satisfaction and professional fulfilment elsewhere. He insists it has nothing to do with Red Bull Racing’s competitiveness.
He said the team’s much-improved showing in Miami, for example, did nothing to sway him one way or the other. We’d have to assume that the sport agrees to rule changes for 2027 that satisfy his complaints — a long shot given the shrinking timeline — and that he then decides he wants to quit Red Bull Racing before any Piastri-related theory comes into play.
He would have to seek a move to McLaren — and McLaren would have to decide it would prefer the Dutchman to one of its drivers. On paper he’s better decorated than both, but signing Verstappen is a big commitment that would upset the carefully calibrated team equilibrium McLaren has worked so hard to establish.
That’s especially the case given Verstappen has insisted for pretty much his entire career that he’s unlikely to race deep into his 30s, meaning he would likely be a short-term prospect. Norris and Piastri could be decade-long drivers, by comparison. When you break it down, the Piastri-Verstappen straight swap is difficult to envisage and, in most cases, harder to justify.
Formula 1 Max Verstappen Oscar Piastri Mclaren Red Bull Racing
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