A new deal between Max Verstappen and Red Bull, coming after well over a year of intrigue about Verstappen's future, has immediately reshaped the landscape of Formula 1's driver market - despite seemingly maintaining the status quo.
Here is our view of who the winners and losers are from this major piece of news.
Winner: Red Bull
Obviously no financial terms will be disclosed, but we can safely make the assumption that this will cost Red Bull the full GDP of a small Oceanian nation - and will presumably come with extra allowances for Verstappen in terms of exploring non-F1 racing activities.
But...like, whatever! In one fell swoop Red Bull has gone from a limping F1 giant to a limping F1 giant that doesn't have to worry about losing its greatest asset - who doubles as probably the greatest asset any F1 team up and down the grid has.
Rumours will re-fire in some capacity if the 2027 car is particularly bad, but this is a huge victory for Red Bull - and a reaffirmation of its status as one of F1's top dogs for years to come.
Losers: Carlos Sainz, Oscar Piastri and other 'dreamers'
It's probably no coincidence that Sainz's new Williams deal - which now really feels like a 'might as well' - was announced the day before a Verstappen extension.
Would Sainz have been a lead candidate to replace Verstappen at Red Bull? Likely not. But any driver market movement will have been good for his chances to returning to the top half of the grid - and Verstappen deciding to step away from F1, which now has conclusively not happened, will have created a small driver vacuum among the 'big four' that Sainz would've been top-of-the-queue (or close to it) to fill.
Verstappen staying cuts off options for all the 'dreamers'. And this doesn't have to just mean the midfield drivers - if someone like, say, Piastri is truly unsettled at McLaren and was at all tempted by the prospect of leading a team like Red Bull instead, that avenue is now shut off for a long time. And anyone who had been eyeing Red Bull will now know that a move there will mean, as it has for a long time, going up against the most fearsome driver in F1.
Winner: Laurent Mekies
There are a few ways you could view the first year and a bit of Mekies at Red Bull up to now. Results were strong in late 2025 and not exactly terrible in 2026 so far, but as my colleague Edd Straw argued quite convincingly in a recent column, the Mekies-era Red Bull seemed at risk of losing what had made it special before.
But the Mekies-era Red Bull has kept Verstappen. Despite the brain drain, which has now extended to McLaren-bound race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase and reportedly Cadillac-bound chief engineer Paul Monaghan, Laurent Mekies has kept Max Verstappen.
And there's a lot of reason to doubt this extension would have happened at Christian Horner's Red Bull.
Loser: Aston Martin
Aston Martin has much bigger fish to fry in 2026 than fanciful pursuits of big-money driver signings.
But now even if the AMR chassis makes huge strides under Adrian Newey and the Honda engine catches up to respectability, Aston Martin has no easy button to press for assembling an elite driver line-up.
You can certainly doubt whether it would have ever been able to attract Verstappen. I am not sure I believe it myself. But it may have been able to use a Verstappen move to its advantage, to secure whoever is displaced.
But now all the best drivers in F1 don't really have decisions to make, and once Fernando Alonso retires Aston Martin may have to make the most of midfield solutions to its driver question.
That is, of course, assuming the car becomes truly competitive.
Winner: George Russell
The looming spectre of Verstappen coming to take George Russell’s Mercedes seat - and it would be his seat, Kimi Antonelli's start to 2026 has made triple-sure of that - is gone.
As shaky as Russell's year has been so far, Mercedes is the right place for him to be in the medium term. If he wants to be champion, and of course he does, then wrestling control back from Antonelli and hoping that Mercedes' competitive level keeps up is his absolute best and 'easiest' path to doing so.
It probably won't happen in '26, but it could happen in '27, and he's no longer under any outside pressure from the only driver that it would make sense for Mercedes to pursue as an immediate upgrade.
Losers: Other Red Bull drivers
Two elements here.
One - drivers like incumbent Isack Hadjar, Arvid Lindblad, maybe Liam Lawson and probably Formula 2's Nikola Tsolov now have one fewer Red Bull Racing seat to target and one fewer free spot in the overall roster.
Admittedly, had Verstappen left Red Bull would have surely pursued an outside recruit - but nonetheless.
Two - all of those drivers, if they progress as they hope, will have to go up against Verstappen at some point, which as we know is a great way to derail or potentially ruin your F1 career.
Winner: F1
Verstappen's new Red Bull commitment must be taken as a vote of confidence in the steps F1 is taking with the current ruleset that he hates.
He has sounded some degree of fed up with this kind of F1 racing all through the season, and Verstappen putting up with the full regulations cycle genuinely felt unlikely given the strength of feeling on his end.
Now he stays. And while we will surely hear more criticism here and there from Verstappen as to the state of the formula, the ultimate embarrassment of having your strongest driver walk away because he doesn't respect the product is averted.
Loser: Also F1
Remember when F1 drivers used to, like, change teams? That was nice.
Lewis Hamilton's switch to Ferrari was a jolt but seemed an aberration in the general trend of F1 - which is drivers, both top and increasingly midfield, favouring the financial security of long-term commitments and teams having the means to provide that security.
It is particularly felt at the top of the grid. Apart from Ferrari, where Hamilton's age is a question mark, and that revolving-door second Red Bull seat, the top teams appear 'frozen' for the medium term.
The current realities of contractual incentives - and the difficulty in adapting to new teams - seem to have created a market that's closer to the 15-year deals they hand out to superstars in baseball than the game of musical chairs that we're more used to in F1.
from The Race https://ift.tt/POl4ZG5
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