VER - P1 | 🏁

so, oracle red bull racing f1 team is a collapsing institution. all the talent that created the conditions for vettel to win and for max to win are either gone in the night like rats off a ship, employed by aston martin, or technically still working for us but gazing longingly at either retirement or another team. hannah schmitz is an outlier and should not be counted.

every team has periods of dominance and decline, right, but also a team isn't just the brand name on the walls, it's the individual people in the uniform. i think i'm pretty unique in terms of f1 fandom because i'm a max fan but i'm also a red bull fan, like, The Team. i loved knowing the names of everyone on the pit wall and gianpiero and the people developing the car and the mechanics and the combined 'personality' of that group of people: the music they play in the garage, the clannish attitude they had for each other and the mischief aimed at the rest of the grid, god help me but i loved christian horner as a team principal and the sharky way he went about things, his protectiveness of max.

do i want max to stay in a collapsing institution for nostalgia's sake? no. the people he liked working with, and who worked well with him, have left. he doesn't owe an energy drink brand anything and even somehow if he did he's paid them back a million times over for the risk they took on him early on. right now we're balanced on the point where max's history, skill, wheel knowledge, development brain, simulator experience, coaching/mentoring ability, setup wizardry, and whatever else i'm missing, are extremely beneficial to red bull, but max is not getting back a work environment, a car, or even a safety record that's beneficial to him.

i'm looking forward to watching red bull cobble themselves together and improve, slowly, over what'll probably be the next four/five years, until they've got a stable of people together again that can start building a competitive team, but i do not want max to be there for that lmfao. i want to watch max win everything. not eventually, but all the time. and i don't think he'll be in formula one for much longer. it would be misery for his last few years, before he fucks off to endurance race full-time, to be p7 finishes or mechanical dnfs. plus the only slim chance we have of changing his mind about the fucking off is if he's having fun at the front again lol.

not red bull. then where?

ALPINE: fuck no

ASTON MARTIN: fuck no

AUDI: fuck no

CADILLAC: don't piss me off

FERRARI: no seats available but also i'd kill myself

HAAS: i said don't piss me off

MCLAREN: no seats available

MERCEDES: everyone's wondering about this one bc it's the only viable option

RACING BULLS: not in a million years but imagine. imagine...

WILLIAMS: nonviable not a race team at this point we should rename these guys john deere

part of why it's taken me forever to answer you is because i'm always suspicious when i agree with the majority opinion. i don't think people draw good conclusions when they're speculating en masse most of the time and also i'm a bitch so when i'm part of a consensus i go hmmmm... max should go to mercedes and be kimi's teammate? original stuff. surely there's something i'm missing here. but i want to give you an answer before max's camp makes any public decisions, i think it'd be fun to have my guess out in advance, and after today (i'm writing this on silverstone sunday) that time limit feels especially pressing. nothing's swayed my opinion in the whole month i've been keeping this in my inbox so i must actually believe it.

"do i want max to leave red bull" is really the question, "do i think red bull is the team with the best chance to get him on the top step more frequently than any other team". i don't think they are. obviously mercedes has the best car, best engine, most settled/stable internal management with the proven ability to run successful championship campaigns, with the best braintrust, and car development tools, and simulator and campus.

i've seen lots of people on here thinking about max moving teams through the lens of, "where can max go to have his people" again, what seat swap will result in that cozy 'family' personality mix i talked about earlier up, with the whole f1 team united behind max specifically and the teammate is there too. in my opinion, nowhere. that will never happen again. he gets that feeling by hanging out in the nürburgring parking lot nowadays. if max goes to mercedes it's not going to become Team Max; it will still be mercedes, and a lot of verstappies will be upset that kimi's championship bids will be supported and backed too.

red bull not listening to max and not taking max's input or advice about the car, which has been happening this year for maybe not the first time, but the first time it was a public news story, is such a betrayal because he's proven himself to them time and time over again. he's their most valuable asset, as i said earlier, and getting less back, so it's baffling and infuriating that the team isn't even making best use of him. but if he swaps out, we're going to have to get somewhat used to that, because red bull had (past tense!) a unique culture that other teams don't. maxcedes doesn't mean "and now toto sucks his dick 24/7 and max gets everything he wants", it just means we got him unchained from the milton keynes basement radiator.