Guenther Steiner does not expect Max Verstappen to leave Red Bull Racing in the short term, despite the tensions on and off the track. “He stays. Max is a racer, so he just stays,” says the former Haas team principal.
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Steiner thinks the situation at Red Bull is less alarming than many suspect based on the two recent crashes in Austria and Silverstone. “What he does need is to know how to motivate his people to give him a car he can win with,” Steiner says in the Red Flags podcast. “Because the car itself wasn’t bad, if you disregard the problems with the rear wing. Performance-wise, it was actually quite good. And at Red Bull, everyone knows what Max (Verstappen, ed.) is like. They know his character. They know that he sometimes expresses his frustration, but afterwards he just wants to win races again. He has brought the team a tremendous amount of success.”
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Steiner continues: “If he were to go to a new team and behave the same way there, it might be received less well. But at Red Bull, the people around him understand exactly why he reacts like that: because he is extremely disappointed when he doesn’t win. Ultimately, he is critical of everything, but that comes down to one thing: he wants to win. Is it pleasant for a team that he sometimes expresses his frustrations publicly? Probably not. But everyone knows why he does that. No one is shocked by it or says: ‘Max, don’t do that.’ This is just who Max is. That is his character.”
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